Letter X
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
August 4, 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.
As to swallows (hirundines rusticae) being found in a torpid state
during the winter in the Isle of Wight, or any part of this country, I
never heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergyman,
of an inquisitive turn, assures me that, when he was a great boy,
some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower
early in the spring, found two or three swifts (hirundines apodes)
among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance, dead, but, on
being carried toward the fire, revived. He told me that, out of his
great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and hung
them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated.
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