Page:White - The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.djvu/207

 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.* (* Tobit ii. 10.)

Perhaps it may be some amusement to you to hear at what times the different species of hirundines arrived this spring in three very distant counties of this kingdom. With us the swallow