390 THE LITERATURE OF THIS SUBJECT 



in a net under water, revived in a warm room, where it fluttered about 

 and then died. Mr. Klein, secretary of Dantzick, procured many sworn 

 affidavits of such occurences. The mother of the Countess Lehndorf said 

 she had seen a bundle of Swallows brought from Lake Frith- Half, which 

 were revived in a room and flew about. Count Schlieben gave a stamped 

 instrument importing that he had seen Swallows caught in a net, had taken 

 one of them in hand, brought it into a warm room, where it lay about an 

 hour, when it began to stir, and soon after flew about. Fermier-G6n6ral 

 Witkowski made affidavit that in 1740 three Swallows had been netted in a 

 pond at Didlaeken, and that in 1741 he got two Swallows from this pond, 

 where they were caught in his presence, and took them home, where they 

 revived, fluttered about, and died three hours after. Amtmanu Bcinke saw 

 nine Swallows brought up in a net from under the ice, and distinctly ob- 

 served their reanimation. Forster rehearses more testimony to the same 

 effect, and continues : — " 7thly, I can reckon myself among the eye-witnesses 

 of this paradoxon of natural history. In the year 1735, being a little boy, I 

 saw several Swalloivs brought in winter by flshermen, from ttie river Vistula 

 to my father's house, where two of them were brought into a warm room, 

 revived and flew about. I saw them several times settling on the warm 

 stone, (which the Northern nations have in their rooms) and I recollect well 

 that the same forenoon they died, and I had them, when dead in my hand. 

 . . . In January [1754] the lake of Lyhahau, belonging to these estates, 

 being covered with ice, I ordered the fishermen to fish therein, and in my 

 presence several Swalloivs were taken ; which the fishermen threw in again ; 

 but one I took up myself, brought it home, which was five miles from thence, 

 and it revived, but died about an hour alter its reviving." * 



Williams, writing of the Swallows of Vermont in 1794, says that at Dauby 

 in that State, there were reports that some of these birds had been taken 

 out of a pond in that town some years previously. A man in digging up roots 

 of the pond lily found several Swallows "enclosed in the mud ; alive, but in 

 a torpid state". He continues : — "I saw an instance which puts the possi- 

 bility of the fact beyond all room for doubt. About the year 1760, two men 

 were digging in the Salt marsh, at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, on the 

 bank of the Charles River, about two feet below the surface of the ground, 

 they dug up a Swallow, wholly surrounded and covered with mud. The 

 Swallow was in a torpid state, but being held in their hands, it revived in 

 about half an hour. The place where this Swallow was dug up was every 

 day covered with the salt water, which at every high tide, was four or five 

 feet deep. The time when this Swallow was found was the latter part of 

 the mouth of February."! 



I might go on almost indefinitely with this sort of thing, but I have ad- 

 duced enough to show the character of the evidence we possess, and this is 

 my only object. 



* Peter Kalm's Travels into North America, Forster's Ed., vol. ii. pp. 

 140-144, 1771. [Quoted at second hand and abridged from Merriam, Trans. 

 Conn. Acad. i. 1877, pp. 28, 29.] 



tThe Natural and Civil History of Vermont. By Samuel Williams. Wal- 

 pole, N. H. 1794. pp. 115, 116. [Quoted after Merriam, I. c] 



