20 OMENSETTER : 



sity of hibernation. It has been estimated that the swift can 

 fly at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles an hour, while 

 even so sedate a traveler as the crow can cover thirty miles in 

 the same period. But it is curious that in former times the 

 swallows, who are among the more speedy migrants, should 

 be credited with spending the colder season in a torpid state. 

 It has been asserted, and even believed by some, that these 

 birds pass the Winter immersed under the ice, at the bottom 

 of lakes or beneath the waters of the sea. 



Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsal, seems to have been 

 the first who adopted this opinion. He informs us that the 

 swallows are found in great clusters at the bottom of the 

 Northern lakes, with mouth to mouth, wing to wing, foot to 

 foot, and that in Autumn they creep down the reeds to their 

 subaqueous retreats. " That the good archbishop," Mr. Pen- 

 nant slyly remarks, "did not want for credulity in other 

 instances appears from this, that after having stocked the 

 bottoms of the lakes with birds, he stores the clouds with 

 mice, which sometimes fall in plentiful showers on Norway 

 and the neighboring countries ! " 



Mr. Kalm, the Swedish naturalist, states that "swallows 

 appear in the Jerseys about the beginning of April and are 

 on their first arrival wet, because they have emerged from the 

 seas or lakes, at the bottom of which they had remained in a 

 torpid state during the whole Winter." 



Another writer has endeavored to support the notion that 

 swallows lie under the water during the Winter, and gives the 

 following account, which he collected from some countrymen, 

 of their manner of retiring. They asserted, he tells us, that 

 the swallows sometimes assembled in numbers on a reed till it 

 broke and sunk them to the bottom ; that their immersion 

 was preceded by a kind of dirge which lasted more than a 

 quarter of an hour ; that others united, laid hold of a straw 

 with their bills and plunged down in company ; that others, 

 l)y clinging together with their feet, formed a large mass, and 

 in this manner committed themselves to the deep." 



