tober 28, 1760."]

GILBERT WHITE

Born in 1720, died in 1793; educated at Oxford and became a
fellow of Oriel; later made curate at Selborne; his "Natural
History of Selborne," published in 1789.

THE CHIMNEY-SWALLOW[45]

The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the first comer
of all the British _hirundines_; and appears in general on or about
the 13th of April, as I have remarked from many years' observation.
Not but now and then a straggler is seen much earlier: and in
particular, when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a whole day
together on a sunny warm Shrove Tuesday; which day could not fall out
later than the middle of March, and often happened early in February.

It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes and
mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that if these early
visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the case in the two
dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for a
time. A circumstance this, much more in favor of hiding than
migration; since it is much more probable that a bird should retire to
its hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two to warmer
latitudes.

The swallow, tho called the chimney-swallow, by no means builds
altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and outhouses against
the rafters; and so she did in Virgil's time: "Garrula quam tignis
nidos suspendat hirundo" (the twittering swallow hangs its nest from
the beams).

In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called _Ladu swala_, the
barn-swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe, there are no
chimneys to houses, except they are English built: in these countries
she constructs her nest in porches, and gateways, and galleries, and
open halls.

Here and there a bird may affect some odd peculiar place; as we have
known a swallow build down a shaft of an old well through which chalk
had been formerly drawn up for the purpose of manure: but in general
with us this _hirundo_ breeds in chimneys, and loves to haunt those
stacks where there is a constant fire--no doubt for the sake of
warmth. Not that it can subsist in the immediate shaft where there is
a fire; but prefers one adjoining to that of the kitchen, and
disregards the perpetual smoke of the funnel, as I have often observed
with some degree of wonder.

Five or six feet more down the chimney does this little bird begin to
form her nest, about the middle of