Lucretius, lib. iv. 1. 576.
Letter XXXIX
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne, May 13, 1778.
Dear Sir,
Among the many singularities attending those amusing birds the
swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every year
the same number of pairs invariably; at least the result of my
inquiry has been exactly the same for a long time past. The
swallows and martins are so numerous, and so widely distributed
over the village, that it is hardly possible to recount them; while the
swifts, though they do not all build in the church, yet so frequently
haunt it, and play and rendezvous round it, that they are easily
enumerated. The number that I constantly find are eight pairs;
about half of which reside in the church, and the rest build in some
of the lowest and meanest thatched cottages. Now as these eight
pairs, allowance being made for accidents, breed yearly eight pairs
more, what becomes annually of this increase; and what
determines every spring which pairs shall visit us, and reoccupy
their ancient haunts ?
Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have
always supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that strange
antistorge (in Greek), which immediately succeeds in the feathered
kind to the most passionate fondness, is the occasion of an equal
dispersion of birds over the face of the earth.
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