.22 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
LETTER X. 
August ath, 1767. 
It has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbors 
whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural 
knowledge; so that, for want of a companion to quicken my 
industry and sharpen my attention, I have made but slender 
progress in a kind of information to which I have been attached 
from my childhood. 
As to swallows being found in a torpid state during the 
winter in the Isle of Wight, or any part of this country, I never 
heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergyman 
of an inquisitive turn assures me that when he was a great boy, 
some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church 
tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts among the 
rubbish, which were at first appearance dead, but on being ° 
carried towards the fire revived. He told me, that out of his 
great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and 
hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated. 
Another intelligent person has informed me, that while he 
was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great frag- 
ment of the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the 
beach, and that many people found swallows among the rub- 
bish ; but on my questioning him whether he saw any of those 
birds himself, to my no small disappointment, he answered me 
in the negative ; but that others assured him they did. 
Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July 
r1th, and young martins were then fledged in their nests. 
Both species will breed again once. For I see by my fauna of 
last year, that young broods came forth so late as September 
18th. Are not these late hatchings more in favor of hiding 
than migration? Nay, some young martins remained in their 
nests last year so late as September 29th ; and yet they totally 
disappeared with us by the 5th October, 
