atmosphere. Martins are, by far, the least agile of the four species; their wings and tails are short, and, therefore, they are not capable of such surprising turns, and quick and glancing evolutions, as the swallow. Accordingly, they make use of a placid, easy motion, in a middle region of the air, seldom mounting to any great height, and never sweeping along together over the surface of the ground or water. They do not wander far for food, but affect sheltered districts, over some lake, or under some hanging wood, or in some hollow vale, especially in windy weather. They breed the latest of all the swallow kind: in 1772, they had nestlings on to October the twenty-first, and are never without unfledged young as late as Michaelmas:

As the summer declines, the congregating flocks increase in numbers daily by the constant accession of the second broods: till at last they swarm in myriads upon myriads round the villages on the Thames, darkening the face of the sky as they frequent the aits of that river, where they roost. They retire, the bulk of them I mean, in vast flocks together, about the beginning of October; but have appeared, of late years, in a considerable flight, in this neighbourhood, for one day or two, as late as November the third and sixth, after they were supposed to have been gone for more than a fortnight.* They, therefore, withdraw with us the latest of any

The following remarks on birds of passage were sent me by an intelligent naval officer and naturalist :

:

"Birds do not always migrate at night, nor in fine weather and fair winds only on the 25th of September, 1848, beating up channel, wind north-east fresh, weather raw, hazy and unpleasant, hundreds of small birds crossed, making direct for the coast of France; they were not in flocks, but singly or in small parties; the distance was about 100 miles to the nearest land. The weather looked very threatening but did not become any worse, very few took notice of the vessel, but continued the direct course and would probably reach land in four or five hours; the species were several, but I could only recognise two, a green sylvia and the stonechat; the latter flew as on shore, with its usual weak jerking flight, only a few feet above the water. A week before, when about 400 miles from land, one of the latter came on board, remained a short time, then departed and returned in the evening, was again seen next morning, left again (there were at this time several vessels in sight, so that the poor little fellow no doubt visited them all), in the evening returned and flew completely exhausted into the open porthole of one of the cabins, and lay almost dead on the bed; a little water revived him, and the next day I fed him with about fifty flies, spiders, &c., with plenty of meat, which he took eagerly, but my

species. Unless these birds are very short-lived, indeed, or unless they do not return to the district where they are bred, they must undergo vast devastation somehow and somewhere; for the birds that return yearly bear no manner of proportion to the birds that retire.

House-martins are distinguished from their congeners by having their legs covered with soft downy feathers down to their toes. They are no songsters, but twitter, in a pretty, inward, soft manner, in their nests. During the time of breeding, they are often greatly molested with fleas.

LETTER LV1.

TO THE SAME.

RINGMER, near LEWES, Dec. 9, 1773. DEAR SIR, I received your last favour just as I was setting out for this place; and am pleased to find that my monography met with your approbation. My remarks are the result of many years' observation; and are, I trust, true on the whole; though I do not pretend to say that they are perfectly void of mistake, or that a more nice observer might not make many additions, since subjects of this kind are inexhaustible.

poor little emigrant was dead the next morning: poor little fellow, the long continued easterly winds had driven him completely out of his reckoning, and from the appearance of his emaciated body when I skinned him, he had probably been seven or eight days without food. We are apt to imagine that because some birds fly to Africa, they must be tired before they get there, but I do not see any occasion for any of our birds to go a greater distance than across the channel, and then they may go southward by easy stages: the greatest distance that I am aware of that a (land) bird of passage has to fly, is from Australia to New Zealand, more than 1000 miles without one resting place. yet this is accomplished by two beautiful species of cuckoo, one of those is not larger than a wagtail, yet even this long flight may be made in little more than one day. The natives say these birds come from Hawaihi; if it is a fact that they are found there, it will prove not only the great range of flight, but confirm the account of the natives having originally come from thence, and likewise tend to show how correct they are in their observations of nature, and how well they remember all their ancient traditions."—H. C.

If you think my letter worthy the notice of your respectable Society, you are at liberty to lay it before them; and they will consider it, I hope, as it was intended, as a humble attempt to promote a more minute inquiry into natural history, into the life and conversation of animals. Perhaps, hereafter, I may be induced to take the house-swallow under consideration; and from that proceed to the rest of the British hirundines.

Though I have now travelled the Sussex Downs upwards of thirty years, yet I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year by year; and I think I see new beauties every time I traverse it. The range, which runs from Chichester eastward as far as East Bourn, is about sixty miles in length, and is called the South Downs, properly speaking, only round Lewes. As you pass along, you command a noble view of the wold, or weald, on one hand, and the broad downs and sea, on the other. Mr. Ray used to visit a family* just at the foot of these hills, and was so ravished with the prospect from Plympton-plain, near Lewes, that he mentions those capes in his Wisdom of God in the Works of Creation, with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks them equal to anything he had seen in the finest parts of Europe.

For my own part, I think there is somewhat peculiarly sweet and amusing in the shapely figured aspect of chalk hills, in preference to those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless.

Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and not so happy as to convey to you the same idea, but I never contemplate these mountains without thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to growth in their gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides, and regular hollows and slopes, that carry at once the air of vegetative dilatation and expansion; or, was there ever a time when these immense masses of calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation by some adventitious moisture,— were raised and leavened into such shapes by some plastic power, and so made to swell and heave their broad backs into the sky, so much above the less animated clay of the wild below?

*Mr. Courthope, of Danny.