own your own friendships; though sometimes you may be ashamed of some imperfections of your friend.

But if you yet inquire, further, whether fancy may be an ingredient in your choice? I answer, that fancy may minister to this as to all other actions in which there is a liberty and variety. For in all things where there is a latitude, every faculty will endeavour to be pleased, and sometimes the meanest persons in a house have a festival: even sympathies and natural inclinations to some persons, and a conformity of humours, and proportionable loves, and the beauty of the face, and a witty answer, may first strike the flint and kindle a spark, which if it falls upon tender and compliant natures may grow into a flame; but this will never be maintained at the rate of friendship unless it be fed by pure materials, by worthinesses which are the food of friendship. These are the prettinesses of prosperity and good-natured wit; but when we speak of friendship, which is the best thing in the world, (for it is love and beneficence, it is charity that is fitted for society,) we cannot suppose a brave pile should be built up with nothing.

But I know not whither I am going: I did only mean to say that because friendship is that by which the world is most blessed and receives most good, it ought to be chosen amongst the wor thiest persons-that is, amongst those that can do greatest benefit to each other. And though in equal worthiness I may choose by my eye, or ear, that is, into the consideration of the essential, I may take in also the accidental and extrinsic worthinesses; yet I ought to give every one their just value: when the internal beauties are equal, these shall help to weigh down the scale, and I will love a worthy friend that can delight me as well as profit me, rather than him who cannot delight me at all, and profit me no more: but yet I will not weigh the gayest flowers, or the wings of butterflies, against wheat; but when I am to choose wheat, I may take that which looks the brightest. When I choose my friend, 1 will not stay till I have received a kindness: but I will choose such a one that can do me many if I need them: but I mean such kindnesses which make me wiser, and which make me better: that is, I will, when I choose my friend, choose him that is the

bravest, the worthiest, and the most excellent person; and then your first question is soon answered. To love such a person, and to contract such friendships, is just so authorised by the principles of Christianity, as it is warranted to love wisdom and virtue, goodness and beneficence, and all the impresses of God upon the spirits of brave men.

[WHO has not heard of "The Natural History of Selborne,' -one of the most delightful books in the English language! The author was the Reverend Gilbert White, who for forty years lived in the retirement of his beautiful native village, Selborne, in Hampshire, diligently observing the appearances of nature, and recording them in letters to his friends. He was the first to take Natural History out of the hands of the mere classifiers, and to show how full of interest is the commonest object of creation, when carefully examined, and diligently watched through its course of growth, of maturity, and of decay. Mr White was borne in 1720, and died in 1793.] chodge

THE HOUSE-MARTIN.-In obedience to your injunctions, I sit down to give you some account of the house-martin, or martlet; and, if my monography of this little, domestic, and familiar bird

M

should happen to meet with your approbation, I may probably soon extend my inquiries to the rest of the British hirundinesthe swallow, the swift, and the bank-martin.

ture.

A few house-martins begin to appear about the 16th of April; usually some few days later than the swallow. For some time after they appear, the hirundines in general pay no attention to the business of nidification, but play and sport about, either to recruit from the fatigue of their journey, if they do migrate at all, or else that their blood may recover its true tone and texture after it has been so long benumbed by the severities of winter. About the middle of May, if the weather be fine, the martin begins to think in earnest of providing a mansion for its family. The crust or shell of this nest seems to be formed of such dirt or loam as comes most readily to hand, and is tempered and wrought together with little bits of broken straws to render it tough and tenacious. As this bird often builds against a perpendicular wall without any projecting ledge under, it requires its utmost efforts to get the first foundation firmly fixed, so that it may safely carry the superstrucOn this occasion the bird not only clings with its claws, but partly supports itself by strongly inclining its tail against the wall, making that a fulcrum; and, thus steadied, it works and plasters the materials into the face of the brick or stone. But then, that this work may not, while it is soft and green, pull itself down by its own weight, the provident architect has prudence and forbearance enough not to advance her work too fast; but by building only in the morning, and by dedicating the rest of the day to food and amusement, gives it sufficient time to dry and harden. About half an inch seems to be a sufficient layer for a day. Thus careful workmen when they build mud-walls, (informed at first perhaps by this little bird,) raise but a moderate layer at a time, and then desist lest the work should become top-heavy, and so be ruined by its own weight. By this method in about ten or twelve days is formed an hemispheric nest, with a small aperture towards the top, strong, compact, and warm; and perfectly fitted for all the purposes for which it was intended. But then nothing is more common than for the house-sparrow, as soon as the shell is

finished, to seize on it as its own, to eject the owner, and to line it after its own manner.

After so much labour is bestowed in erecting a mansion, as nature seldom works in vain, martins will breed on for several years together in the same nest, where it happens to be wellsheltered and secure from the injuries of the weather. The shell or crust of the nest is a sort of rustic work full of nobs and protuberances on the outside: nor is the inside of those that I have examined smoothed with any exactness at all; but is rendered soft and warm, and fit for incubation, by a lining of small straws, grasses, and feathers ; and sometimes by a bed of moss inter

woven with wool.

As the young of small birds presently arrive at their full growth, they soon become impatient of confinement, and sit all day with their heads out at the orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them with food from morning till night. For a time the young are fed on the wing by their parents; but the feat is done by so quick and almost imperceptible a sleight, that a person must have attended very exactly to their motions before he would be able to perceive it. As soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, the dams immediately turn their thoughts to the business of a second brood; while the first flight, shaken off and rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the birds that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny mornings and evenings round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of churches and houses. These congregations usually begin to take place about the first week in August; and therefore we may conclude that by that time the first flight is pretty well over. The young of this species do not quit their abodes altogether; but the more forward birds get abroad some days before the rest. These approaching the eaves of buildings and playing about before them, make people think that several old ones attend.one nest. They are often capricious in fixing on a nesting-place, beginning many edifices, and leaving them unfinished; but when once a nest is completed in a sheltered place, it serves for several seasons. Those which breed in a ready-finished house get the start, in

hatching, of those that build new, by ten days or a fortnight. These industrious artificers are at their labours in the long days before four in the morning: when they fix their materials they plaster them on with their chins, moving their heads with a quick vibratory motion. They dip and wash as they fly sometimes in very hot weather, but not so frequently as swallows. It has been observed that martins usually build to a north-east or north-west aspect, that the heat of the sun may not crack and destroy their nests; but instances are also remembered, where they bred for many years in vast abundance in a hot stifled inn-yard, against a wall facing to the south.

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 long 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 the 21st of October, 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 the 3d and 6th of November, after they were supposed to have been gone for more than a fortnight. They, therefore, withdrew with us the latest of any species. Unless these birds are short-lived, indeed, or unless they do not return to the district where they are bred, they must undergo vast devastations somehow, and somewhere; for the birds