928 SIVALLOW 



India or Burma, even further to the southward, occasionally 

 reaching Australia, while those of North America, H. erythrogastra, 

 extend their winter- wanderings to Southern Brazil ; but, whither- 

 soever they then resort, they during that season moult their 

 feathers, and this fact affords one of the strongest arguments 

 against the popular belief (which, curious to say, is still partly if 

 not fully entertained by many who should know better) of their 

 becoming torpid in winter, for a state of torpidity would suspend 

 all animal functions.^ The chestnut forehead and throat, the shining 

 steel-blue upper plumage and the dusky-white — in some cases 

 reddening so as almost to vie with the frontal and gular patches — 

 of the lower parts are well known to every person of observation, as 

 is the markedly-forked tail, which is become proverbial of this bird. 

 Taking the word Swallow in a more extended sense, it is used 

 for all the members of the Family Hirundinidx,'^ excepting a few 

 to which the name Martin (p. 536) has been applied, and this 

 Family includes more than 100 species, which have been placed in 

 many different genera. The true Swallow has very many 

 affines, some of which range almost as widely as itself, while others 

 (as the form resident in Egypt, H. savignii) seem to have curiously 

 restricted limits, and much the same may be said of some of its 

 more distant relatives. But altogether the Family forms one of the 

 most circumscribed and therefore one of the most natural groups of 

 OsciNES, having no near allies ; for, though in outward appearance 

 and in some habits the Swallows bear a considerable resemblance 

 to Swifts, the latter belong to a very different Order, and are 

 not Passerine birds at all, as their structure, both internal and 

 external, proves. It has been sometimes stated that the Hirun- 

 dinidx have their nearest relations in the Muscicapidx (Flycatcher, 



1 See John Hunter's Essays ami Observations in Natural History, edited by- 

 Sir R. Owen in 1861 (ii. p. 280). An excellent bibliography of the Swallow- 

 torpidity controversy, up to 1878,, was given by Prof. Coues {Birds of the 

 Colorado Valley, pp. 378-390), who seemed still to hanker after the ancient 

 faith in "hibernation," as do apparently some other writers not so well informed. 



^ An enormous amount of labour was bestowed upon ihe Hirundinidaa by 

 Dr. Sharpe [Cat. B. Br. Mus. x. pp. 85-210), only commensurate, perhaps, 

 with that required for an understanding of the results at which he arrived. It 

 was to be hoped that in the finely-illustrated MoTwgraph of the Family which he 

 and Mr. Wyatt have published (2 vols. 4to, London: 1885-94), more of the 

 many puzzles which the group offers would have been cleared up, but it still 

 remains an intricate maze to tempt the adventurous. Mr. Wyatfs figures are 

 very beautiful, but he is apparently one of those who believe that birds when 

 flying at full speed do not extend their legs behind them. A curious omission 

 of the authors is any reference in the work, with its copious bibliogi-aphy, to 

 the admirable account of the British Hirundiniclae contributed by Gilbert White 

 to the Royal Society {Phil. Trans. Ixiv. pp. 196-201; Ixv. pp. 258-276) and 

 afterwards reprinted in the Natural History of Sclhorne (1789). 



