Page:White - The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.djvu/96

 in England, and what I have never been able yet to procure) retires and migrates very early in the summer: it also ranges very high for its food, feeding in a different region of the air; and that is the reason I never could procure one. Now this is exactly the case with the swifts; for they take their food in a more exalted region than the other species, and are very seldom seen hawking for flies near the ground, or over the surface of the water. From hence I would conclude that these hirundines, and the larger bats, are supported by some sorts of high-flying gnats, scarabs, or phalaenae, that are of short continuance; and that the short stay of these strangers is regulated by the defect of their food. (* The little bat appears almost every month in the year; but I have never seen the large ones till the end of April, nor after July. They are most common in June, but never in any plenty; are a rare species with us.)

By my journal it appears that curlews clamoured on to October the thirty-first; since which I have not seen or heard any. Swallows were observed on to November the third.

Letter XXVII To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Feb. 22, 1770.

Dear Sir,

Hedge-hogs abound in my gardens and fields. The manner in which they eat their roots of the plantain in my grass-walks is very curious: with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. In this respect they are