i8 THE MIGRATIONS OF BIRDS 



strange trait was explained by the statement that 

 overnight the birds had turned to frogs or had sunk 

 in the mud. Naturalists gravely related seeing 

 swallows congregate on reeds until their weight bent 

 down the slender support and the birds were sub- 

 merged beneath the water. Glaus Magnus wrote 

 that fishermen often found swallows fastened in 

 bunches in the mud of marshes, and gave an illustra- 

 tion depicting two men drawing a net filled with 

 mingled swallows and fishes. (See fig. 2.) 



During the eighteenth and early part of the nine- 

 teenth century this question was argued with es- 

 pecial vigor, and many instances in which hiberna- 

 tion was alleged were brought forward. Men re- 

 ported seeing swallows fly into the water, or told of 

 torpid individuals drawn up in seines. It is related 

 in Williams's History of Vermont , published in 1794, 

 that about the year 1760 a torpid swallow was dug 

 from a depth of two feet in the salt marsh on the 

 banks of the Charles River at Cambridge, Mass- 

 achusetts, during the latter part of February, and 

 that this bird revived in half an hour! Several 

 papers on the subject were read before the French 

 Academy, and the Royal Society in London, and 

 John Hunter, the anatomist, as an experiment, one 

 autumn shut several swallows in an outhouse, with 

 tubs of water floored with mud in which rushes had 

 been planted, with death to the birds by starvation 



