But as that short, warm period was succeeded as well as preceded by harsh, severe weather, with frequent frosts and ice, and cutting winds, the insects withdrew, the tortoise retired again into the ground,
and the swallows were seen no more until the 10th April, when, the rigour of the spring abating, a softer season began to prevail.
Again, it appears by my journals for many years past that house-martins retire, to a bird, about the beginning of October, so that a person not very observant of such matters would conclude that they had taken their last farewell; but then it may be seen in my diaries also that considerable flocks have discovered themselves again in the first week of November, and often on the fourth day of that month, only for one day, and that not as if they were in actual migration, but playing about at their leisure and feeding calmly, as if no enterprise of moment at all agitated their spirits. And this was the case in the beginning of this very month; for on the 4th November more than twenty house-martins, which, in appearance, had all departed about the 7th October, were seen again for that one morning only sporting between my fields and the Hanger, and feasting on insects which swarmed in that sheltered district. The preceding day was wet and blustering, but the 4th was dark, and mild, and soft, the wind at south-west, and the thermometer at 58½°, a pitch not common at that season of the year. Moreover, it may not be amiss to add in this place, that whenever the thermometer is above 50°, the bat comes flitting out in every autumnal and winter month.
From all these circumstances laid together, it is obvious that torpid insects, reptiles, and quadrupeds, are awakened from their profoundest slumbers by a little untimely warmth, and therefore that nothing so much promotes its death-like stupor as a defect of heat. And farther, it is reasonable to suppose that two whole species, or at least many individuals of those two species of British hirundines, do never leave this island at all, but partake of the same benumbed state; for we cannot suppose, that after a month’s absence, house-martins can return from southern regions to appear for one morning in November, or that house-swallows should leave the districts of Asia to enjoy in March the transient summer of a couple of days.
I am, etc.
LETTER XXXVII.
Selborne, Jan. 8th, 1778.
Dear Sir,—There was in this village several years ago a miserable pauper, who from his birth was afflicted with a leprosy, as far as we are aware of a singular kind, since it affected only the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. This scaly eruption usually broke out twice in the year, at the spring and
fall; and, by peeling away, left the skin so thin and tender that neither his hands nor feet were able to perform their functions; so that the poor object was half his time on crutches, incapable of employ, and languishing in a tiresome state of indolence and inactivity. His habit was lean, lank, and cadaverous. In this sad plight he dragged on a miserable existence, a burden to himself and his parish, which was obliged to support him till he was relieved by death at more than thirty years of age.
The good women, who love to account for every defect in children by the doctrine of longing, said that his mother felt a violent propensity for oysters, which she was unable to gratify; and that the black rough scurf on his hands and feet were the shells of that fish. We knew his parents, neither of which were lepers; his father in particular lived to be far advanced in years.