go BIRDS IN LEGEND 



covered in the spring. This theory is of great antiquity, 

 and was applied especially to the swallows, swifts, night- 

 ingales and corncrakes of the Mediterranean region; but 

 even Aristotle doubted whether it was true of all birds. 

 He discusses at some length in his Natural History a 

 the winter retreat of fishes and other creatures that hi- 

 bernate, and continues : 



"Many kinds of birds also conceal themselves, and they do 

 not all, as some suppose, migrate to warmer climes . . . and 

 many swallows have been seen in hollow places almost stripped 

 of feathers; and kites, when they first showed themselves, have 

 come from similar situations. . . . Some of the doves conceal 

 themselves; others do not, but migrate along with the swallows. 

 The thrush and the starling also conceal themselves." 



I have an unverified memorandum from the pen of 

 Antonio Galvano, who resided in Mexico, long ago, that 

 in his time hummingbirds 'live of the dew, and the juyce 

 of flowers and roses. They die or sleeepe every yeere in 

 the moneth of October, sitting upon a little bough in a 

 warme and close place: they revive or wake againe in 

 the moneth of April after that the flowers be sprung, and 

 therefore they call them the revived birds." 



Even Gilbert White, 45 was inclined to think hibernation 

 might be true, at least of British swallows ; and Cowper 

 sings — 



The swallows in their torpid state 

 Compose their useless wings. 



Alexander Wilson 46 thought it necessary to combat 

 vigorously the same fiction then persistent among Penn- 

 sylvania farmers, and did so at length in his American 

 Ornithology published in 1808. 



But the wildest hypothesis was the one prevalent in the 



