On the afternoon of the 18th I went with my friends to the ground behind the churchyard, from which a view of the sky all round can be obtained. Four or five swifts were visible quietly flying about the sky, all wide apart. At six o'clock a little bunch of half a dozen swifts formed, and began to chase each other in the usual way, and more birds, singly, and in twos and threes, began to arrive. Some of these were seen coming to the spot from the direction of Alton. Gradually the bunch grew until it was a big crowd numbering seventy to eighty birds, and as it grew the excitement of the birds increased: until eight o'clock they kept up their aerial mad gambols, and then, as on the previous evenings, the flock gradually dispersed. On the evening of the 19th the performance was repeated, the birds congregated numbering about sixty. On the 20th the number had diminished to about forty, and an equal number returned on the following evening; and this was the last time. We watched in vain for them on the 22nd: no swifts {176} but the half-a-dozen Selborne birds usually to be seen towards evening were visible; nor did they return on any other day up to the 24th, when my visit came to an end. It is possible, and even probable, that these swifts which came from a distance to hold their evening games at Selborne were birds that had already finished breeding, and were now free to go from home and spend a good deal of time in purely recreative exercises. The curious point is that they should have made choice of this sultry spot for such a purpose. It was, moreover, new to me to find that swifts do sometimes go a distance from home to indulge in such pastimes. I had always thought that the birds seen pursuing each other with screams through the sky at any place were the dwellers and breeders in the locality; and this is probably the idea that most persons have. I wish I could have visited Selborne again last July, in order to find out whether or not the evening gatherings and pastimes of the swifts occur annually. But I was engaged elsewhere, and at the village I failed to discover any person with interest enough in such subjects to watch for me. It would have been very strange if I had found such a one. It was not until October 1902 that I went back, two months after the swifts had gone; but I was well occupied for two or three weeks during this latest visit in observing the ways of a grasshopper.