may be said than can with truth of every
individual of her sex; since she is . . .

" . . . quae nec reticere loquenti,
Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo."

I am, etc.

P.S.--The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the following lovely
quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so poetically accounting for
their causes from popular superstition:--

"Quae bene quom videas, rationem reddere possis
Tute tibi atque aliis, quo pacto per loca sola
Saxa paries formas verborum ex ordine reddant,
Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos
Quaerimus, et magna dispersos voce ciemus.
Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces
Unam quom jaceres: ita colles collibus ipsis
Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre.
Haec loca capripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere
Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur;
Quorum noctivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti
Adfirmant volgo taciturna silentia rumpi,
Chordarumque sonos fieri, dulceisque querelas,
Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum:
Et genus agricolum late sentiscere, quom Pan
Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans,
Unco saepe labro calamos percurrit hianteis,
Fistula silvestrem ne cesset fundere musam."

LUCRETIUS, Lib. iv. l. 576.

LETTER XXXIX.

SELBORNE, _May_ 13_th_, 1778.

Dear Sir,--Among the many singularities attending those amusing birds the
swifts, I am now confirmed in the opinion that we have every year the
same number of pairs invariably; at least the result of my inquiry has
been exactly the same for a long time past. The swallows and martins are
so numerous, and so widely distributed over the village, that it is
hardly possible to recount them; while the swifts, though they do not
build in the church, yet so frequently haunt it, and play and rendezvous
round it, that they are easily enumerated. The number that I constantly
find are eight pairs; about half of which reside in the church, and the
rest build in some of the lowest and meanest thatched cottages. Now as
these eight pairs, allowance being made for accidents, breed yearly eight
pairs more, what becomes annually of this increase; and what determines
every spring which pairs shall visit us, and reoccupy their ancient
haunts?

Ever since I have attended to the subject of ornithology, I have always
supposed that that sudden reverse of affection, that strange [Greek
text], which immediately succeeds in the feat