The Baffling Swallow

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes [1] Keith sums up White’s enduring contributions to the field of natural history as follows: White distinguished three species of willow warbler; he was the first in England to describe the lesser whitethroat, the harvest mouse, and the noctule bat; he was the first to recognize that earthworms are hermaphroditic; he anticipated Charles Darwin in isolating the ancestral prototype of domestic pigeons; he made original contributions to our understanding of protective coloration; and he anticipated modern theories of bird territory (Keith 46–47). [2] As Dadswell observes, “Overall, White’s records showed that hibernation could virtually be ruled out as an explanation of the comings and goings of the hirundines.” Dadswell correlates this with the current scientific data that proves that swallows congregate in areas where the temperature is 48 degrees Fahrenheit, from Africa to the Arctic Circle (Dadswell 38). [3] Smith’s “The Swallow” was published posthumously in her Beachy Head, Fables and Other Poems in 1807. I am grateful to Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook for calling my attention to the connection between Gilbert White’s History of Selborne and Smith’s poem in her presentation to the UCLA Eighteenth‐Century Studies Group on April 30, 2004, although my interpretation of that connection differs from hers

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• The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, in the County of Southampton

  Open Access•Gilbert White•Natural History and Antiquities…•2011

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• Travels into North America

  S W Jackman, Peter Kalm et al.•The New England Quarterly•1973

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