The Natural History of Selborne, 1879/Letter 10
LETTER X.
August 4th, 1767.
It has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose studies have led them 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.
The Swallow.
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 11th, and young martins (hirundines urbicæ) 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 18th. 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 29th; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the 5th 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; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the 7th November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying in sight together, an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds!
A little yellow bird[e2] (it is either a species of the alauda trivialis, or rather perhaps of the motacilla trochilus) still continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the tops of tall woods. The stoparola of Ray (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called in your zoology the fly-catcher. There is one circumstance characteristic of this bird which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes its stand on the
The Spotted Fly-catcher (Muscicapa grisola).
top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together.
I perceive there are more than one species of the motacilla trochilus. Mr. Derham supposes, in "Ray's Philos. Letters," that he has discovered three. In these there is again an instance of some very common birds that have as yet no English name.
Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the black-cap (motacilla atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not[e4]: I think there is no doubt of it: for, in April, in the first fine weather, they come trooping all at once, into these parts, but are never seen in the winter. They are delicate songsters.
Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes.[e5]
I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which I mentioned to you in town. The person that brought me the last says they are plenty in harvest, at which time I will take care to get more; and will endeavour to put the matter out of doubt, whether it be a nondescript species or not.
I suspect much there may be two species of water-rats.[e6] Ray says, and Linnæus after him, that the water-rat is web-footed behind. Now I have discovered a rat on the banks of our little stream that is not web-footed, and yet is an excellent swimmer and diver: it answers exactly to the mus amphibius of Linnæus (see Syst. Nat.) which he says "natat in fossis et urinatur."
The Blackcap.
I should be glad to procure one "plantis palmatis." Linnæus seems to be in a puzzle about his mus amphibius, and to doubt whether it differs from his mus terrestris; which if it be, as he allows, the "mus agrestis capite grandi brachyuros," of Ray, is widely different from the water-rat, both in size, make, and manner of life.
As to the falco, which I mentioned in town, I shall take the liberty to send it down to you into Wales; presuming on your candour, that you will excuse me if it should appear as familiar to you as it is strange to me. Though mutilated "qualem dices … antehac fuisse, tales cum sint reliquiæ!"
It haunted a marshy piece of ground in quest of wild-ducks and snipes; but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which it was tearing in pieces.
Common Rat.
I cannot make it answer to any of our English hawks; neither could I find any like it at the curious exhibition of stuffed birds in Spring Gardens. I found it nailed up at the end of a barn, which is the countryman's museum.[e7]
The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds.
notes to letter x.
e1 ↑ The reader will observe, as he proceeds, that White leans more and more to the idea that swallows live in a state of torpidity through the winter, and do not migrate. He never, however, discovered any proof of this theory. It has been ascertained beyond a doubt that swallows do migrate, and that if any solitary individuals do lie torpid, it is because they were too weak at the end of the summer to undertake their long journey to warmer countries. It is questionable, however, whether any such specimens live through the winter, although it is of course possible that they might exist in some sheltered crevice where insects might also hide and cluster. The late appearance of solitary swallows simply shows that some have lingered beyond others, and the early appearance of some in spring is in accordance with the usual practice of migratory birds, pioneers arriving before the main body.
If any swallows appeared during some of the warm days we sometimes have in December and January, when insects are abroad, it would point to the hybernation of some specimens, but I am not aware of any such occurrences. Mr. Jesse, in his edition of White, gives an instance of a pair of swallows (presumably house-martins) sealing up their young in their nest, and the young ones lived until the next spring, when they pecked their way out. This interesting instance, however, did not come under his own observation. The 
Snipe.
Water-Rat.
The sand-martin is the first of the swallow kind to arrive, and the swift the last.
In the Field of April 12th, 1879, I see the following note by Mr. Henry Smith, which is apropos of the subject:—
"On Sunday last, April 6th, I saw a single swallow flying over the town of Ringwood; and on going out of the town across the river, where a large tract of meadow is generally inundated in wet weather, I saw, to my astonishment, a multitude of martins skimming over the surface of the water. This was early in the morning, just before a tremendous downpour of rain, lasting six hours. At 3 p.m., when the rain had ceased, and the sky had become clear, I went out again, and found that the air was resounding with the twittering of the birds, which were flying at a great altitude, and in vast numbers. The low flight in the early morning, and the exalted position of the birds in the afternoon, indicated on the one hand the forthcoming heavy rain, and on the other presaged the fine afternoon which followed. In all my observations of the arrival of the hirundines, I have never before noticed them in a large flock; but at their earliest date of arrival, one generally has marked their advent here and there in small numbers; their congregating in large flocks generally precedes their departure."
e2 ↑ Possibly the Grasshopper Warbler. This little bird has a peculiar sibilant warble, which, like the cry of the corncrake, is apparently ventriloquous. The sound seems here, there, and everywhere, and it is only by the closest observation and the greatest caution that a sight of the tiny songster can be obtained.
e3 ↑ In the verandah of my father's house in Shropshire, four or five pairs of fly-catchers used to build, and there were other nests on a ledge in the orchard wall, so that in the summer the standard roses and the gateposts each had a fly-catcher using it as a raiding-point. The birds which rested in the verandah took not the slightest notice of people passing and repassing. Sparrows, wrens, and chaffinches also nested among the roses which trailed up it.
e4 ↑ The Blackcap does migrate.
e5 ↑ The humming of the snipe has puzzled many a naturalist to say how it was made. It is also called bleating, and, in Norfolk, "lamming," because the noise is something like that caused by a lamb. I have noticed great numbers of snipe bleating on the Norfolk Roads, and I am satisfied that it is made by the rapid vibration of the long feathers of the tail and wings. The sound is only made when the snipe is in the air and descending a little, rapidly, in an oblique direction against the wind.
e6 ↑ There is only one species of water-rat, and strictly speaking it is not a rat. It differs anatomically and in its mode of life from the rat. Its proper name is the water-vole. Its feet are not webbed. Its food is entirely vegetable, while the common rat, which is found in numbers by the waterside, will eat fish or animal matter. Of the rat proper there are two species, the original black English rat, which is exceedingly rare, and the Norway rat, which is the one now so common. It has completely ousted the black rat.
e7 ↑ This hawk was apparently a variety of the Peregrine Falcon.