The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 | Page 4

manner.
After so much labour is bestowed in erecting a mansion, as Nature
seldom works in vain, martins will breed on for several years together
in the same nest, where it happens to be well sheltered and secure from
the injuries of weather. The shell or crust of the nest is a sort of rustic
work, full of knobs and protuberances on the outside; nor is the inside
of those that I have examined smoothed with any exactness at all; but is
rendered soft and warm, and fit for incubation, by a lining of small
straws, grasses, and feathers, and sometimes by a bed of moss
interwoven with wool. In this nest they tread, or engender, frequently
during the time of building; and the hen lays from three to five white
eggs.
At first when the young are hatched, and are in a naked and helpless
condition, the parent birds, with tender assiduity, carry out what comes
away from their young. Was it not for this affectionate cleanliness the
nestlings would soon be burnt up, and destroyed in so deep and hollow
a nest, by their own caustic excrement. In the quadruped creation the
same neat precaution is made use of, particularly among dogs and cats,
where the dams lick away what proceeds from their young. But in birds
there seems to be a particular provision, that the dung of nestlings is
enveloped in a tough kind of jelly, and therefore is the easier conveyed
off without soiling or daubing. Yet, as nature is cleanly in all her ways,
the young perform this office for themselves in a little time by thrusting
their tails out at the aperture of their nest. As the young of small birds
presently arrive at their [Greek text], or full growth, they soon become
impatient of confinement, and sit all day with their heads out at the

orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them with food
from morning to night. For a time the young are fed on the wing by
their parents; but the feat is done by so quick and almost imperceptible
a flight that a person must have attended very exactly to their motions
before he would be able to perceive it. As soon as the young are able to
shift for themselves, the dams immediately turn their thoughts to the
business of a second brood; while the first flight, shaken off and
rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the birds
that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny mornings and evenings
round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of churches and houses.
These congregatings usually begin to take place about the first week in
August, and therefore we may conclude that by that time the first flight
is pretty well over. The young of this species do not quit their abodes
altogether; but the more forward birds get abroad some days before the
rest. These approaching the eaves of buildings, and playing about
before them, make people think that several old ones attend one nest.
They are often capricious in fixing on a nesting-place, beginning many
edifices, and leaving them unfinished; but when once a nest is
completed in a sheltered place, it serves for several seasons. Those
which breed in a ready finished house get the start in hatching of those
that build new by ten days or a fortnight. These industrious artificers
are at their labours in the long days before four in the morning. When
they fix their materials they plaster them on with their chins, moving
their heads with a quick vibratory motion. They dip and wash as they
fly sometimes in very hot weather, but not so frequently as swallows. It
has been observed that martins usually build to a north-east or
north-west aspect, that the heat of the sun may not crack and destroy
their nests; but instances are also remembered where they bred for
many years in vast abundance in a hot stifled inn-yard against a wall
facing to the south.
Birds in general are wise in their choice of situation; but in this
neighbourhood every summer is seen a strong proof to the contrary at a
house without eaves in an exposed district, where some martins build
year by year in the corners of the windows. But, as the corners of these
windows (which face to the south-east and south-west) are too shallow,
the nests are washed down every hard rain; and yet these birds drudge

on to no purpose from summer to summer, without changing their
aspect or house. It is a piteous sight to see them labouring when half
their nest is washed away and bringing dirt . . . "generis lapsi sarcire
ruinas." Thus is instinct a most wonderful unequal faculty; in some