MIGRATION. 285 
“swallows are often dragged up by fishermen in 
the form of clustered masses, mouth to mouth, wing 
to wing, and foot to foot, these having at the be- 
ginning of autumn collected among the reeds pre- 
vious to submersion.” Pennant shrewdly remarks 
that “‘ the good archbishop did not want credulity ;” 
for, “‘after having stocked the bottoms of lakes 
with birds, he stores the clouds with mice, which 
sometimes fall in plentiful showers in Norway and 
the neighbouring countries.” 
Etmuller, professor of Botany and Anatomy at 
Leipsic, a century after Olaus, gives his personal 
testimony to the circumstance. ‘I remember,” 
he says, ‘‘to have found more than a bushel meas- 
ure (medimnus) would hold of swallows closely clus- 
tered among the reeds of a fishpond under the ice, 
all of them to appearance dead, but the heart still + 
pulsating.” 
Linneus, taking the matter as proved, expressly 
says that “ the chimney-swallow (Hirundo rustica), 
together with the window-swallow (H. urbica), de- 
merges, and in spring emerges ;” and we find from 
the dissertations read before the Academy of Upsal, 
that the submersion of swallows was received in 
Sweden as an acknowledged fact. The late Peter 
Collinson, in his correspondence with Linnezus, 
“repeatedly urged him to bring the matter to a de- 
cisive issue by proposing some questions, and point- 
ing out an easy method of having them answered. 
As Linneus did not take any notice of these ques- 
tions for a long while, although he was strongly 
called upon at different times by his acute corre- 
spondent, we may fairly infer that he was unable to 
give any satisfactory answer; and his constant eva- 
sion of the experimental proofs is an indication of 
his being unprepared to support what he had as- 
serted by anything more than the common author - 
ities ”* 
* Reeves on Torpidity, p. 47 
