22 OMENSETTER : 



stormy Winter on the beach, and that many persons found 

 swallows among the rubbish ; but, on my questioning him, 

 whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small dis- 

 appointment he answered me in the negative, but that others 

 assured him they did." 



Speaking of an Autumn sojourn at Sunbury, a pleasant 

 village on the Thames near Hampton Court, Mr. White was 

 much amused by the swallows of those parts. But what 

 struck him most was that from the time they began to congre- 

 gate, forsaking the chimneys and houses, they roosted ever>' 

 night in the osier beds of the river. Now resorting to that 

 element, at such season of the year, serves to give countenance 

 to the Northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring 

 under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much persuaded of 

 this fact that he talks, in his Calendar of Flora, as familiarly 

 of the swallows going under water in the beginning of Septem- 

 ber as he would of his poultry going to roost a little before 

 sunset. 



All the reptiles of cold climates become torpid during the 

 Winter, and the phenomena they exhibit do not differ essen- 

 tially from those of quadrupeds. Below the temperature of 

 50° they soon fall into a state of lethargy, which continues 

 until Spring, and by exposing them in an ice house where the 

 atmosphere remains constantly below such degree of heat, 

 reptiles have been kept in a torpid state for three years and a 

 half and have at the end of this time been readily revived. 

 No limit can be set to the period during which reptiles might 

 thus be kept in a dormant state, without the extinction of life, 

 and some related circumstance would seem to lend credence to 

 the finding of toads imbedded in stone. 



Land tortoises bury themselves in holes in the ground, and 

 fresh water tortoises in the banks or at the bottoms of lakes 

 and rivers. Lizards and snakes retire to holes in trees, under 

 stones or among dead leaves, where many species congregate 

 in large numbers and pass the Winter closely entwined, and 

 in a still more letharoic state than that c^f the hibernatine 



