The squab young we brought down and placed on
the grass-plot, where they tumbled about, and were as helpless as a
new-born child. While we contemplated their naked bodies, their
unwieldy disproportioned abdomina, and their heads, too heavy for
their necks to support, we could not but wonder when we reflected
that these shiftless beings in a little more than a fortnight would be
able to dash through the air almost with the inconceivable
swiftness of a meteor; and perhaps, in their emigration must
traverse vast continents and oceans as distant as the equator. So
soon does nature advance small birds to their elikia (in Greek) or
state of perfection; while the progressive growth of men and large
quadrupeds is slow and tedious!
I am, etc.
Letter XXII
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, Sept. 13, 1774.
Dear Sir,
By means of a straight cottage chimney I had an opportunity this
summer of remarking, at my leisure, how swallows ascend and
descend through the shaft; but my pleasure, in contemplating the
address with which this feat was performed to a consideraable
depth in the chimney, was somewhat interrupted by apprehensions
lest my eyes might undergo the same fate with those of Tobit.
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