Page:White - The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.djvu/120

 page says 'its drink the dew'; whereas it should be 'it drinks on the wing'; for all the swallow kind sip their water as they sweep over the face of pools or rivers: like Virgil's bees, they drink flying, 'flumina summa libant.' In this method of drinking perhaps this genus may be peculiar.

Of the sedge-bird be pleased to say it sings most part of the night; its notes are hurrying, but not unpleasing, and imitative of several birds; as the sparrow, swallow, skylark. When it happens to be silent in the night, by throwing a stone or clod into the bushes where it sits you immediately set it a-singing; or in other words, though it slumbers sometimes, yet as soon as it is awakened it reassumes its song.

Letter XL To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Sept. 2, 1774.

Dear Sir,

Before your letter arrived, and of my own accord, I had been remarking and comparing the tails of the male and female swallow, and this ere any young broods appeared; so that there was no danger of confounding the dams with their pulli: and besides, as they were then always in pairs, and busied in the employ of nidification, there could be no room for mistaking the sexes, nor the individuals of different chimnies the one for the other. From all my observations, it constantly appeared that each sex