The natural history of Selborne . sitive turn assures me that, whenhe was a great boy, some workmen, in pulling downthe battlements of a church tower early in thespring, found two or three swifts (hirundLnes apodes)among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance,dead; but, on being carried towards the fire, revi-ved. He told me that, out of his great care to pre-serve them, he put them in a paper bag and hungthem by the kitchen fire, where they were suiToca-ted. Another intelligent persofi has informed me that,while he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, inSussex, a great fragment of the ch
The natural history of Selborne . sitive turn assures me that, whenhe was a great boy, some workmen, in pulling downthe battlements of a church tower early in thespring, found two or three swifts (hirundLnes apodes)among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance,dead; but, on being carried towards the fire, revi-ved. He told me that, out of his great care to pre-serve them, he put them in a paper bag and hungthem by the kitchen fire, where they were suiToca-ted. Another intelligent persofi has informed me that,while he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, inSussex, a great fragment of the chalk cliff fell downone stormy winter on the beach, and that manypeople found swallows among the rubbish ; but, onmy questioning him whether he saw any of thosebirds himself, to my no small disappointment heanswered me in the negative, but that others him they did. Young broods of swallows began to appear this OF SELBORNE. 43 year on July tlie 11th, and young martins {hirun-dines urhiccE) were then fledged in their Both species will hatch again once; for I see bymy Fauna of last year that young broods cameforth so late as September the 18th. Are not theselate hatchings more in favour of hiding than mi-gration ? Nay, some young martins remained intheir nests last year so late as September the 29th ;and yet they totally disappeared with us by the 5thof October. How strange it is that the swift, which seems tolive exactly the same life with the swallow and 44 NATUI IL HISTORY house-martin, should leave us before the middle ofAugust invariably ! while the latter stay often tillthe middle of October; and once I saw numbersof house-martins on the 7th of November. Themartins and fieldfares were flying in sighttogether ; an uncommon assemblage of summerand winter birds! A little yellow bird (it is either a species of thealauda iriviaUs, or rather, perhaps, of the motacillatrochilus) still continues to make a sibilous shiver,ing noise in the tops of tall woods.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1840, booksubjectnaturalhistory, booky
