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 the
eleventh, and young martins (hirundines urbicae) were then fledged
in their nests. Both species will breed again once. For I see by my
Fauna of last year, that young broods come forth so late as
September the eighteenth. 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 the twenty-
ninth; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the fifth of
October.
How strange is it 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 seventh of November.
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