102 



" Far over purple seas, 

 They wait in sunny ease 

 The balmy southern breeae 

 To waft them to their northern homes once more." 



Ornithologists, however, though able to point out with a fair de- 

 gree of certainty the winter resort of each of the American swallows, 

 as well as of most of the other birds on the Check-list, have nothing to 

 tell us of the wherabouts of the chimney swift at this season. He has 

 never been reported from Central or South America, and from the 

 beginning of November, when he is last observed at the southernmost 

 stations of the United States until his reappearance there about the 

 middle of March, his written history is a blank. To account for this 

 mysterious disappearance the old theory of hibernation has been parti- 

 ally revived by some ornithologists. 



In the days when the swallows were supposed to spend half the 

 year buried in the mud at the bottoms of lakes and ponds, the chimney 

 swifts were assigned winter quarters somewhat more congenial in the 

 hollow tree from which they used to he seen issuing in such vast fiocks 

 on the sunny mornings in spring. Alexander Wilson writing in i8io-i3 

 found it necessary vigorously to combat these ideas. But our know 

 ledge has made but little progress in this direction in the meantime, 

 and Dr. Coues in his " Birds of the Colorado Valley," discusses the 

 question of possible hibernation seriously and at some length. The 

 trouble is that nearly all the evidence on either side is negative ; and to 

 this shadowy array of facts we in Ottawa can add our little quota — that 

 the swifts cestainly do not spend the winter in the tower which is their 

 favourite home in spring and autumn. This has been proved by in- 

 spection for two successive winters. 



Before saying farewell to this little bird let us again place him for 

 a moment side by side with his rival and imitator, the swallow. Even 

 in the points of superficial resemblance, which at the beginning of this 

 paper we took such care to overlook, there is, I believe a lesson for the 

 student of natural history; for they show how creatures of very different 

 origin and structure may take on a great degree of external similarity 

 through living upon similar food and under similar outward conditions. 

 The swifts are probably the older family in their present form, and as we 



