IIIBKRNATION. .21 



Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton was informed that about the 

 year 1765 a number of bank swallows were found in a gum 

 tree, some four miles from the town of Lancaster. This was 

 in the depth of winter. They were all torpid, but part of 

 them, upon the application of heat, recovered. 



These accounts, ludicrous as they may appear, were read- 

 ily accepted in the olden time by a gullible public. The first 

 doubt seems to rise in the mind of a more accurate observer. 



Gilbert White was a clergyman of the Church of England, 

 whose memory, be it said without disparagement, is cherished 

 more for his interpretation of nature than for his service to 

 religion. Born in 1720, for nearly a half century this faithful 

 chronicler found 



"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 

 Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 



In his "Natural Histon,^ of Selborne " he has brought 

 the humble Hampshire parish almost to the door of every 

 nature lover and hallowed the modest village of his birth b}^ 

 the recollections of a life work beside which the exploits of 

 the Percys and the Howards sink into mediocrity. 



To Gilbert White no phase of the moving natural pano- 

 rama claimed greater interest than that of the migration of 

 birds. Mr. White says: "As to swallows being found in a 

 torpid state during the Winter in the Isle of Wight or in any 

 part of this country, I never heard any such account worth 

 attending to. But a clergyman of an inquisitive turn assures 

 me that when he was a great boy some workmen in pulling 

 down the battlements of a church tower earl}^ in the Spring 

 found two or three swifts among the rubbish, which were at 

 first appearance dead, but on being carried toward the fire, 

 revived. He told me that out of his great care to preserve 

 them he put them, in a paper bag and hung them by the 

 kitchen fire, where they were suffocated. Another intelligent 

 person has informed me that when he was a schoolboy in 

 Sussex a ^reat fragment of the chalk cliff fell down one 



