286 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



The most recent authority which we have met 

 with upon the subject is that of Baron Cuvier, who 

 asserts of the bank-swallow (Hirundo riparia, PLINY), 

 as " well authenticated, that it falls into a lethargic 

 state during winter, and even that it passes that 

 season at the bottom of marshy waters." It would 

 have been well if he had at least referred us to 

 some of these authenticated accounts ; for we have 

 been unable to trace anything more satisfactory 

 than what we have already mentioned. 



We deem it unnecessary to enter at much length 

 upon a refutation of these opinions, as it must be 

 obvious that it is physiologically impossible for a 

 swallow or any other bird to live many minutes, 

 much less for months, under water. The frog and 

 other amphibious animals which do hybernate under 

 water have a peculiar formation of the heart which 

 enables them to do so, and which is not thus form- 

 ed in swallows. " Though entirely satisfied," says 

 Pennant, " in our own mind of the impossibility of 

 these relations, yet desirous of strengthening our 

 opinion with some better authority, we applied to 

 that able anatomist, Mr. John Hunter, who was so 

 obliging to inform us that he had dissected many 

 swallows, but found nothing in them different from 

 other birds as to the organs of respiration. That 

 all those animals which he had dissected of the 

 class that sleep during winter, such as lizards, frogs, 

 &c., had a very different conformation as to these 

 organs. That all these animals, he believes, do 

 breathe in their torpid state^ and, as far as his ex- 

 perience reaches, he knows^hey do ; and that there- 

 fore he esteems it a very wild opinion that terres- 

 trial animals can remain any long time under water 

 without drowning."* 



Independently of the established principles of 

 physiology, the matter has been experimentally 



* Brit. Zool., ii., 253. 



