Hybernation of Swallows.— Patents. 317 - 
norant country boy, who, unaccustomed to think abstractedly, is 
little able to describe the gradual improvement of his intellect, 
under this sudden and astonishing introduction to the visible 
world. He confirmed, however, with readiness the conclusion, 
so obvious from the feelings of Dr. Cheselden’s patient, that 
our common judgement of figure, quaritity, and distance, is not 
an inherent faculty in the mind, but a practical result, from the 
ever-repeated experiment of comparing the perspective with the 
actual figure, bulk, or distance. For a cricket-ball was put in 
one hand, and a cube of soap in the other, and he was desired to 
describe their shape; he was unable to do it by his newly ac- 
quired and inexperienced vision, and was obliged to have con- 
stant recourse to the more practised sense of feeling. When 
any object is presented to him, although he can without hesita- 
tion declare its colour, he is wholly unable to decide on its qua- 
lity, until he is allowed to handle it.—Benzal Pauper, 
= 
HYBERNATION OF SWALLOWS. 
Extract of a Letter from Joseph Wood, esg. to a Gentleman in 
Washington. 
“ Marietta, June 30. 
‘| came to this country in the autumn of 1785, and resided 
atBelleville about three miles below this place,on theVirginia side, 
till 1791. During my residence there, I observed one evening 
a little after sunset, a vast number of swallows collected together 
high in the air, and hovering over a particular spot; this was 
in autumn, when the weather began to grow cool. Having been 
informed by some of my school-mates, when a boy, that they 
had seen swallows dive into a mill-pond, and disappear, 1 was 
determined to watch these, and in about ten or fifteen minutes, 
as darkness approached, they lowered their flight, and concen- 
trated in a smaller circle, and at length, to my surprise, poured 
into a very large hollow sycamore-tree, about seventy feet above 
the ground. I observed that they came out for several succes- 
sive days, and returned in the evening in the same manner. In 
the following year, some of the settlers cut down the tree; the 
hollow was about six feet in diameter, and was filled six inches 
deep with bones and feathers, and other remains of dead birds 5 
' —such, probably, as were too old and feeble to fly out in the 
spring. They must have occupied the tree for many years. I 
have since seen two other trees that have fallen, with similar ap- 
pearances,” —_——— 
LIST OF PATENTS FOR NEW INVENTIONS. 
To Edmund Richard Ball, of Albury Mills, in the parish of 
Albury, Surry, for his new method of manufacturing paper of 
superior 
