284 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



which they got through without any difficulty, and 

 lived three or four years, regularly moulting every 

 year at the usual time. On the renewal of their 

 feathers, it appeared that their tails were forked ex- 

 actly the same as in those birds which return hither 

 in the spring, and in every respect their appearance 

 was the same."* 



The story of bank-swallows having been drawn 

 from their holes on the Rhine, it may be observed, 

 is dated in April, which is about the usual time of 

 the appearance of those birds, and is no more ex- 

 traordinary than it would be to find a sparrow un- 

 der a house-eave, or a tomtit in the hole of a tree. 

 Did the bank-swallows really remain torpid in those 

 holes during the winter, nothing would be easier 

 than to find them there ; a circumstance which we 

 believe has never been recorded even in the annals 

 of credulity. In a numerous colony of this spe- 

 cies, established in the bank of a stone-quarry at 

 Catrine, in Ayreshire, we have in numerous in- 

 stances witnessed the opening of the nestholes in 

 the operations of quarrying, and never knew or 

 heard of a swallow being found there either torpid 

 or otherwise. 



But however untenable the opinion may be that 

 swallows and cuckoos become torpid in winter, it 

 appears rational, when compared with the notion 

 that has been gravely supported of their going un- 

 der water to undergo their winter's sleep; a-notion 

 which we should not have brought under review 

 were it not that it still seems to linger in the fan- 

 cies of some, from the authority of the names of 

 those by whom it has been adopted. The earliest 

 statement of this notion which we have been able 

 to trace is given by Olaus Magnus, archbishop of 

 Upsal, in Sweden, published in 1555. 



" From the northern waters," says the archbishop, 



* British Birds, i., 324. 



