22 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 6G. 



and mill ponds to bury itself in the mud with eels and snap- 

 ping turtles ; or to creep ingloriously into a cavern, a rat hole, 

 or a hollow tree, there to doze with snakes, toads, and other 

 reptiles until the return of spring! Is not this true, ye wise 

 men of Europe and America, who have published so many 

 credible narrations on this subject? ... Is then the organiza- 

 tion of the Swallow less delicate than that of a man? Can a 

 bird, whose vital functions are destroyed by a short privation 

 of pure air and its usual food, sustain, for six months, a situ- 

 ation where the most robust man would perish in a few hours 

 or minutes? Away with such absurdities! They are unwor- 

 thy of a serious refutation." 



The whereabouts of the Chimney Swift during the colder 

 months is still a mystery, but no doubt time will vindicate the 

 judgment of the clear-headed Wilson in this instance, as it has 

 already done in that of the Swallow. However, one of our 

 most brilliant ornithologists, as late as 1878, when in one of 

 his argumentative moods, in answer to his own question of 

 where the Chimney Swift goes in winter, writes: " I suppose 

 that it hibernates in hollow trees, and could give reasons for 

 the suppositions." ^ Professor W. W. Cooke recently stated : ^ 

 " With troops of fledglings, catching their winged prey as they 

 go, and lodging by night in some tall chimney, the flocks drift 

 slowly south, joining with other bands, until on the northern 

 coast of the Gulf of Mexico they become an innumerable host. 

 Then they disappear. Did they drop into the water and hiber- 

 nate in the mud, as was believed of old, their obliteration could 

 not be more complete. In the last week in March a joyful 

 twittering far overhead announces their return to the Gulf 

 coast, but the intervening five months is still the Swift's se- 

 cret." 



Of the comparatively few observers upon whom Wilson 

 could place reliance, William Bartram, who had aided Ed- 

 wards half a century earlier ; was perhaps quoted the oftenest. 

 John Abbott, of Savannah, an artist and student of Nature, 



* Coues, Birds of Colorado Valley, 1878, p. 377. 



* Some New Facts About the Migrations of Birds. Tear Bool< of 

 the Dept, of Agri. for 1903, p. 386. 



