By what I can guess from the admeasurements of the hills that have been taken round my house, I should suppose that these hills surmount the wild, at an average, at about the rate of five hundred feet.

One thing is very remarkable as to the sheep: from the westward, till you get to the river Adur, all the flocks have horns, and smooth white faces, and white legs; and a hornless sheep is rarely to be seen. But as soon as you pass that river eastward, and mount Beeding-hill, all the flocks at once become hornless, or, as they call them, poll-sheep; and have, moreover, black faces, with a white tuft of wool on their foreheads, and speckled and spotted legs: so that you would think that the flocks of Laban were pasturing on one side of the stream, and the variegated breed of his son-in-law, Jacob, were cantoned on the other. And this diversity holds good respectively on each side, from the valley of Bramber and Beeding to the eastward, and westward all the whole length of the downs. If you talk with the shepherds on this subject, they tell you that the case has been so from time immemorial; and smile at your simplicity if you ask them, whether the situation of these two different breeds might not be reversed? (However, an intelligent friend of mine near Chichester is determined to try the experiment; and has, this autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced a parcel of black-faced hornless rams among his horned western ewes.) The black-faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and the finest wool.*

As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late a season of the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a look-out as possible so near the southern coast, with respect to the summer short-winged birds of passage. We make great inquiries concerning the withdrawing of the swallow kind, without examining enough into the causes why this tribe is never to be seen in winter; for, entre nous, the disappearing of the latter is more marvellous than that of the former, and much more unaccountable. The hirundines, if they please, are certainly capable of migration; and yet, no doubt, are often found in a torpid state; but redstarts,

*If Mr. White was now alive he would be led to think very different! so great has been the improvement of late years in our breed of sheep.--ED.

nightingales, white-throats, black-caps, &c., &c., are very ill provided for long flights; have never been once found, as I ever heard of, in a torpid state; and yet can never be supposed, in such troops, from year to year, to dodge and elude the eyes of the curious and inquisitive, which, from day to day, discern the other small birds that are known to abide our winters. But, notwithstanding all my care, I saw nothing like a summer bird of passage; and, what is more strange, not one wheatear, though they abound so in the autumn as to be a considerable perquisite to the shepherds that take them; and though many are seen to my knowledge all the winter through, in many parts of the south of England. The most intelligent shepherd tells me, that some few of these birds appear on the downs in March, and then withdraw to breed, probably, in warrens and stone quarries: now and then a nest is ploughed up in a fallow on the downs, under a furrow; but it is thought a rarity. At the time of wheat-harvest, they begin to be taken in great numbers; are sent for sale in vast quantities to Brighthelmstone and Tunbridge, and appear at the tables of all the gentry that entertain with any degree of elegance. About Michaelmas they retire, and are seen no more till March. Though these birds are, when in season, in great plenty on the South Downs round Lewes, yet at East Bourn, which is the eastern extremity of those downs, they abound much more. One thing

is

very remarkable, that, though in the height of the season so many hundreds of dozens are taken, yet they are never seen to flock; and it is a rare thing to see more than three or four at a time: so that there must be a perpetual flitting and constant progressive succession. It does not appear that any wheatears are taken to the westward of Houghton-bridge, which stands on the river Arun.

I did not fail to look particularly after my new migration of ring-ousels; and to take notice whether they continued on the downs to this season of the year; as I had formerly remarked them in the month of October, all the way from Chichester to Lewes, wherever there were any shrubs and covert; but not one bird of this sort came within my observation. I only saw a few larks and whinchats, some rooks, and several kites and buzzards.

About midsummer, a flight of rossbills comes to the

pine-groves about this house, but never make any long stay.*

The old tortoise, that I have mentioned in a former letter, still continues in this garden; and retired under ground about the 20th of November, and came out again for one day on the 30th: it lies now buried in a wet swampy border under a wall facing to the south, and is enveloped at present in mud and mire!

Here is a large rookery round this house, the inhabitants of which seem to get their livelihood very easily; for they spend the greatest part of the day on their nest-trees wher the weather is mild. These rooks retire every evening, all the winter, from this rookery, where they only call by the way, as they are going to roost in deep woods; at the dawn of day they always revisit their nest-trees, and are preceded a few minutes by a flight of daws that act as it were as their harbingers.

LETTER LVII.

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE, Jan. 2, 1769.

DEAR SIR,-The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is, undoubtedly, the first comer of all the British hirundines; and appears in general on or about the 13th of April, as I have remarked from many years' observation. Not but now and then a straggler is seen much earlier; and, in particular, when I was a boy, I observed a swallow for a whole day together on a sunny warm Shrove-Tuesday; which day could not fall out later than the middle of March, and often happened early in February.

It is worth remarking, that these birds are seen first about lakes and mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that, if these early visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the

A pretty large flock of crossbills visited Ambleside, in Westmoreland, in October, 1828, frequenting the plantations of young larches.-W. J.

case of the two dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for a time; a circumstance this, much more in favour of hiding than migration; since it is much more probable that a bird should retire to its hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two only to warmer latitudes.

The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, by no means builds altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and out-houses, against the rafters; and so she did in Virgil's time,

"Ante

Garrula quàm tignis nidos suspendat hirundo.”

"Before the noisy swallow's nest depends,

From the strong beam that through the roof extends."

In Sweden, she builds in barns, and is called ladu swala (the barn-swallow.) Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe, there are no chimneys to houses, except they are Englishbuilt. In these countries she constructs her nest in porches, and gateways, and galleries, and open halls.*

Here and there a bird may affect some odd, peculiar place; as we have known a swallow build down the shaft of an old well, through which chalk had been formerly drawn up, for the purpose of manure; but, in general, with us this hirundo breeds in chimneys, and loves to haunt those stacks where there is a constant fire-no doubt for the sake of warmth. Not that it can subsist in the immediate shaft where there is a fire; but prefers one adjoining to that of the kitchen, and disregards the perpetual smoke of that funnel, as I have often observed with some degree of wonder.

Five or six, or more feet down the chimney, does this little bird begin to form her nest, about the middle of May, which consists, like that of the house-martin, of a crust or shell composed of dirt or mud, mixed with short pieces of straw, to render it tough and permanent; with this difference, that whereas the shell of the martin is nearly hemispheric, that of the swallow is open at the top, and like half a deep dish:

* I have known a swallow make its nest on the knocker of the hall-door at Pipe Hall, in Warwickshire; and in a low archway through which the water was conducted from a mill-wheel near Dover.-ED.

this nest is lined with fine grasses and feathers, which are often collected as they float in the air.

Wonderful is the address which this adroit bird shows all day long, in ascending and descending with security through so narrow a pass. When hovering over the mouth of the funnel, the vibrations of her wings acting on the confined air, occasion a rumbling like thunder. It is not improbable that the dam submits to this inconvenient situation so low in the shaft in order to secure her broods from rapacious birds, and particularly from owls, which frequently fall down chimneys, perhaps in attempting to get at these nestlings.

The swallow lays from four to six white eggs, dotted with red specks; and brings out her first brood about the last week in June, or the first week in July. The progressive method by which the young are introduced into life, is very amusing: first, they emerge from the shaft with difficulty enough, and often fall down into the rooms below: for a day or so, they are fed on the chimney-top, and then are conducted to the dead leafless bough of some tree, where, sitting in a row, they are attended with great assiduity, and may then be called perchers. In a day or two more, they become fliers, but are still unable to take their own food; therefore, they play about near the place where the dams are hawking for flies; and when a mouthful is collected, at a certain signal given, the dam and the nestling advance, rising towards each other, and meeting at an angle, the young one all the while uttering such a little quick note of gratitude and complacency, that a person must have paid very little regard to the wonders of Nature that has not often remarked this feat.

The dam betakes herself immediately to the business of a second brood as soon as she is disengaged from her first, which at once associates with the first broods of housemartins, and with them congregates, clustering on sunny roofs, towers, and trees. This hirundo brings out her second, brood towards the middle and end of August.*

*The number of insects taken on the wing by swallows, especially when they have young to feed, must be enormous, and their utility is great in proportion. Let me give an instance of it. In a village in Gloucestershire where there were several hop-gardens, some young farmers amused themselves for two or three summers in practising with their guns on the swallows, and either killed or drove them away. The consequence was that the hop-binds were infested