cxxiv LIFE OF WILSON. 



met with a nation of Indians, all of whom, old and young, at the commente- 

 ment of cold weather, descend to the bottom of their lakes and rivers, and 

 there remain until the breaking up of frost ; nay, should I affirm, that thou- 

 sands of people in the neighborhood of this city, regularly undergo the same 

 semi-annual submersion — that I myself had fished up a whole family of these 

 from the bottom of the Schuylkill, where they had lain torpid all winter, car- 

 ried them home, and brought them all comfortably to themselves again ; — 

 should I even publish this in the learned pages of the Transactions of our 

 Philosophical Society,* who would believe me ? Is then the organization of a 

 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 situation where the most robust man would perish in a few hours, 

 or minutes ?f Away with such absurdities ! they are unworthy of a serious 

 refutation. I should be pleased to meet with a man who has been personally 

 more conversant with birds than myself, who has followed them in their wide 

 and devious routes — studied their various manners — mingled with them, and 

 marked their peculiarities more than I have done ; yet the miracle of a resus- 

 citated swallow, in the depth of winter, from the bottom of a mill-pond, is, I 

 confess, a phenomenon in ornithology that I have never met with." 



The subject of the supposed torpidity of swallows has employed many writ- 

 ers, but unfortunately too few of those, whose practical knowledge enabled 

 them to speak with that certainty, which should always give authority to writ- 

 ings on natural history. Reasoning d priori ought to have taught mankind a 



* Here there is a palpable allusion to a paper on the hybernation of swallows, which 

 was published in the sixth volume of the Transactions of the American Philosophical 

 Society. This paper was written by one Frederick Antes, and was communicated to the 

 Society by the late Professor Barton. It is probable that Wilson had also read the 

 " letter on the retreat of house-swallows in winter, from the Honorable Samuel Dexter, 

 Esq., to the Honorable James Bowdoin, Esq. ;" and that "from the Reverend Mr. Pack- 

 ard to the Honorable Samuel Dexter, Esq.," botli of them published in the Memoirs of 

 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of Boston, vols. 1 and 2. 



Such communications are not calculated to do honor to any learned institution ; and 

 they ought to be rejected with scorn and reprehension. 



t Carlisle, in his lecture on muscular motion, observes, that, " animals of the class 

 Mammalia, which hybernate and become torpid in the winter, have at all times a power 

 of subsisting under a confined respiration, which would destroy other animals not having 

 this peculiar habit. In all the hybernating Mammalia there is a peculiar structure of the 

 heart and its principal veins." Philosophical Transactions for 1805, p. 17. 



"If all birds, except swallows," says Reeve, "are able to survive the winter, and they 

 alone are so overcome by the cold as to be rendered torpid, the difference must be found 

 in their anatomical structure, and in their habits of life. 



"Now, in the first place, it is certain that they have, in common with other birds, the 

 three great functions of respiration, circulation, and assimilation : the similarity of their 

 organs, and every circumstance in their mode of living, prove that they are subject to the 

 same laws: they have also a" very high temperature; and are peculiarly organized for 

 rapid and long flight. The size of their lungs, the lightness of their bones, and the 

 buoyancy of their feathers, render it absolutely impossible to sink them in water without 

 a considerable weight ; and they die instantly for want of air." Reeve on Torpidity, 

 p. 43. 



