292 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



blows upon and bears them away southward irresisting 

 as a ball of thistledown carried by the air. 



I see that Dixon, in his Migration of Birds (1897), 

 page 112, says that he knew of a case in which a pair of 

 barn swallows abandoned their young in the early 

 days of November when they were almost able to take 

 care of themselves, whether in or out of the nest he 

 does not say. Nor does he state that the case came 

 directly under his own observation ; if the young were 

 in the nest it may be they were dead before the parent 

 birds set out on their journey. It is possible that 

 such cases do occur from time to time and have been 

 observed, yet they may be exceptional cases. We know 

 that a few swallows do linger on with us into the depth 

 of winter each year ; that they become torpid with 

 cold, and that occasionally one does survive until the 

 following spring. These rare instances gave rise to the 

 belief that swallows hibernate regularly, which was 

 held by serious naturalists down to the early nineteenth 

 century : but we now know that these cases of torpid 

 birds are rare exceptions to the rule that the swallow 

 migrates each autumn to Africa. 



While I was keeping watch on the martins when the 

 fate of the young was still hanging in the balance, there 

 was a good deal of talk on the case among my old 

 fishermen and wild-fowling friends, and about swallows 

 generally. One man told me that last winter (191 1) 

 he was at the neighbouring village of Warham, one 

 bright sunny day about the middle of December, and 

 saw five or six swallows at a pond there flying about in 



