Whether this circumstance will prove anything either way I shall
not pretend to say.

I return you thanks for your account of Cressi-hall; but recollect,
not without regret, that in June 1746 I was visiting for a week
together at Spalding, without ever being told that such a curiosity
was just at hand. Pray send me word in your next what sort of tree
it is that contains such a quantity of herons' nests; and whether the
heronry consists of a whole grove or wood, or only of a few trees.

It gave me satisfaction to find that we accorded so well about the
caprimulgus: all I contended for was to prove that it often chatters
sitting as well as flying; and therefore the noise was voluntary, and
from organic impulse, and not from the resistance of the air against
the hollow of its mouth and throat.

If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last
Michaelmas-day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning: at
first there was a vast fog; but, by the time that I was got seven or
eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun broke out into a
delicate warm day. We were then on a large heath or common, and
I could discern, as the mist began to break away, great numbers of
swallows (hirundines rusticae) clustering on the stinted shrubs and
bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As soon as the air
became clear and pleasant they all were on the wing at once; and,
by a placid and easy flight, proceeded on southward towards the
sea: after this I did not see any more flocks, only now and then a
straggler.

I cannot agree with those persons that assert that the swallow kind