here 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 193 
_ This all observe, and I myself have known 
Both rocks and hills return six words for one : 
The dancing words from hill to hill rebound, 
They all receive, and all restore the sound : 
The vulgar and the neighbors think, and tell, 
That there the Nymphs, and Fauns, and Satyrs dwell : 
And that their wanton sport, their loud delight, 
Breaks through the quiet silence of the night : 
Their music’s softest airs fill all the plains, 
And mighty Pan delights the list’ning swains : 
_ The goat-faced Pan, whose flocks securely feed : 
With long-hung lip he blows his oaten reed ; 
The horned, the half-beast god, when brisk and gay, 
With pine leaves crowned, provokes the swains to play.” 
LUCRETIUS, lib. iv. 
LETTER XXXV. 
SELBORNE, May 13th, 1778. 
Among the many singularities attending those amusing birds 
the swifts, 1 am now confirmed in the opinion that we have 
every year the same number of pairs invariably; at least the 
result of my inquiry has been exactly the same for a long time 
past. The swallows and martins are so numerous, and so 
widely distributed over the village, that it is hardly possible 
to recount them ; while the swifts, though they do not build 
in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and play and 
rendezvous round it, that they are easily enumerated. The 
number that I constantly find are eight pairs; about half of 
which reside in the church, and the rest build in some of the 
lowest and meanest thatched cottages. Now as these eight 
_ pairs, allowance being made for accidents, breed yearly eight 
pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase ; and what 
determines every spring which pairs shall visit us, and reoccupy 
- their ancient haunts? 
