T has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbour whose studies have led him 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 (hirundines rustica) 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 (hirundines apodes) among the rubbish, which seemed, at their first appearance, dead; but, on being carried toward the fire, revived. He told me that, out of his great care * *H. Apus of Yarrel, and Cypseles Apus of Illiger. Pennant uses this information, giving White as an authority, and without comment.-ED. 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 fragment of the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach; and that many people found swallows among the rubbish: 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 the eleventh, and young martins (hirundines urbica) 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 the eighteenth. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests last year so late as September the twentyninth; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the fifth of October. How strange it is that the swift, which seems to live exactly the same life with the swallow and house-martin, should leave us before the middle of August invariably! while the latter stay often till the middle of October; once I even saw numbers of house-martins on the seventh of November. The martins, red-wings and fieldfares were flying in sight together; an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds! [It is not easy to discover whether White really believed in the hybernation of swallows or not; he clings to the idea, and returns to it, although his own arguments seem to refute the notion almost as completely as those of any recent author. Writing twenty years later than the date of this letter, he tells us, in his Observations on Nature, March 23, 1788, that a gentleman who was this week on a visit at Waverly, took the opportunity of examining some of the holes in the sand-bank with which that district abounds. As these are undoubtedly bored by bank martins, and there they avowedly breed: he was in hopes that they might have slept there also, and that he might have surprised them just as they were waking from their winter slumbers. "When we had dug for some time," he says, 66 we found the holes were horizontal and serpentine, as I had observed before; and that the nests were deposited at the inner end, and had been occupied by broods in former summers, but no torpid birds were to be found. The same search was made many years ago with as little success. March 2, 1793, Mr. White adds, "a single sand martin was seen hovering and playing round the sand-pit at Short-heath, where they abound in summer. April 9, 1793, a sober head assures me that this day he saw several on West Hanger common, between Hadleigh and Frensham, several sand martins playing in and out and hanging before some nestholes where the birds nestle. "This incident confirms my suspicions, that this species of hirundo is to be seen the first of any, and gives reason to suppose that they do not leave their wild haunts at all, but are secreted amidst the clefts and caverns of these abrupt cliffs. The late severe weather considered, it is not very probable that these birds should have migrated so early from a tropical region, through all these cutting winds and pinching frosts; but it is easy to suppose that they may, like bats and flies, have been awakened by the influence of the sun, amidst their secret latebra where they have spent the uncomfortable foodless months in a torpid state, and in the profoundest slumbers. "There is a large pond at West Hanger which induces these sand martins to frequent the district; for I have ever remarked that they haunt near great waters, either rivers or lakes." A year later, he says, "During the severe winds that often prevail late in the spring, it is not easy to say how the hirundines subsist: for they withdraw themselves, and are hardly ever seen, nor do any insects appear for their support. That they can retire to rest and sleep away these uncomfortable periods as bats do, is a matter rather suspected than proved; or do they not rather spend their time in deep and sheltered vales near waters where insects are to be found? Certain it is that hardly any individuals have, at such times, been seen for days together. "September 13, 1791, the congregating flocks of hirundines on the church and tower are both beautiful and amusing. When they fly off together from the roof on any alarm, they quite swarm in the air. But they soon settle again in heaps, and pulling their feathers and lifting up their wings to admit the sun, they seem to enjoy the warm situation. Thus they spend the heat of the day, preparing for their migration, and, as it were, consulting when and where they are to go. The flight about the church seems to consist chiefly of house martins, about 400 in number; but there are other places of rendezvous about the village frequented at the same time. It is remarkable that, though most of them sit on the battlements and roof, yet many of them hang or cling for some time by their claws against the surface of the walls in a manner not practised by them at other times of their remaining with us. The swallows seem to delight more in holding their assemblies on trees. "November 3, 1789, the swallows were seen this morning, at Newton Vicarage house, hovering and settling on the roofs and outbuildings. None have been observed at Selborne since October 11. It is very remarkable that after the hirundines have disappeared for some weeks, a few are occasionally seen again; sometimes in the first week of November, and that only for one day. Do they not withdraw and slumber in some hiding place during the interval? for we cannot suppose they had migrated to warmer climes, and returned again for one day. Is it not more probable that they are awakened from sleep, and like the bats are come forth to collect a little food? These swallows looked like young ones."*] *We have given Mr. White's speculations concerning the martins entire, because they are mixed up with much interesting matter respecting these elegant birds, but all idea of their hybernating during the winter has long been abandoned by naturalists; in fact, it never was supported by any number of facts, and Mr. White himself throws doubts upon it in the twenty-fourth and forty-second letters. The authorities by which the migration of swallows is established, are both numerous and important. Prince Charles Buonaparte records his agreeable surprise occasioned by the visit of a party of swallows to the ship Delaware, in which he was a passenger, five hundred miles from the coast of Portugal, and four hundred from the coast of Africa, after a gale from the eastward, on the 20th of March, 1828. The same year the first swallow was seen on our coasts on the 17th of April. A similar occurrence took place in one of Audubon's voyages across the Atlantic. The voyagers sometimes reach our shore so exhausted |