The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 | Page 5

instances so much above reason, in other respects so far below it!
Martins love to frequent towns, especially if there are great lakes and
rivers at hand; nay, they even affect the close air of London. And I have
not only seen them nesting in the Borough, but even in the Strand and
Fleet Street; but then it was obvious from the dinginess of their aspect
that their feathers partook of the filth of that sooty atmosphere. Martins
are by far the least agile of the four species; their wings and tails are
short, and therefore they are not capable of such surprising turns and
quick and glancing evolutions as the swallow. Accordingly they make
use of a placid easy motion in a middle region of the air, seldom
mounting to any great height, and never sweeping long together over
the surface of the ground or water. They do not wander far for food, but
affect sheltered districts, over some lake, or under some hanging wood,
or in some hollow vale, especially in windy weather. They breed the
latest of all the swallow kind: in 1772 they had nestlings on to October
21st, and are never without unfledged young as late as Michaelmas.
As the summer declines the congregating flocks increase in numbers
daily by the constant accession of the second broods, till at last they
swarm in myriads upon myriads round the villages on the Thames,
darkening the face of the sky as they frequent the aits of that river,
where they roost. They retire, the bulk of them, I mean, in vast flocks
together about the beginning of October, but have appeared of late
years in a considerable flight in this neighbourhood, for one day or two,
as late as November 3rd and 6th, after they were supposed to have been
gone for more than a fortnight. They therefore withdraw with us the
latest of any species. Unless these birds are very short-lived indeed, or
unless they do not return to the districts where they are bred, they must
undergo vast devastations somehow and somewhere; for the birds that
return yearly bear no manner of proportion to the birds that retire.
House-martins are distinguished from their congeners by having their
legs covered with soft downy feathers down to their toes. They are no

songsters, but twitter in a pretty inward soft manner in their nests.
During the time of breeding they are often greatly molested with fleas.
I am, etc.

LETTER XVII.
RINGMER, near LEWES, Dec. 9th, 1773.
Dear Sir,--I received your last favour just as I was setting out for this
place, and am pleased to find that my monography met with your
approbation. My remarks are the result of many years' observation, and
are, I trust, true in the whole, though I do not pretend to say that they
are perfectly void of mistake, or that a more nice observer might not
make many additions, since subjects of this kind are inexhaustible.
If you think my letter worthy the notice of your respectable society,
you are at liberty to lay it before them, and they will consider it, I hope,
as it was intended, as a humble attempt to promote a more minute
inquiry into natural history, into the life and conversation of animals.
Perhaps, hereafter, I may be induced to take the house-swallow under
consideration, and from that proceed to the rest of the British
hirundines.
Though I have now travelled the Sussex Downs upwards of thirty years,
yet I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh
admiration year by year, and I think I see new beauties every time I
traverse it. This range, which runs from Chichester eastward as far as
East Bourn, is about sixty miles in length, and is called the South
Downs, properly speaking, only round Lewes. As you pass along you
command a noble view of the wild, or weald, on one hand, and the
broad downs and sea on the other. Mr. Ray used to visit a family just at
the foot of these hills, and was so ravished with the prospect from
Plumpton Plain, near Lewes, that he mentions those scapes in his
"Wisdom of God in the Works of the Creation" with the utmost
satisfaction, and thinks them equal to anything he had seen in the finest

parts of Europe.
For my own part, I think there is somewhat peculiarly sweet and
amusing in the shapely-figured aspect of chalk-hills in preference to
those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless.
Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and not so happy as to
convey to you the same idea; but I never contemplate these mountains
without thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to growth in their
gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like protuberances, their