262 SWALLOWS. 



but the temperature of the apartment into which they 

 were carried being considerably raised, by a good turf 

 fire, they gradually evinced symptoms of reanimation; 

 and in less than a quarter of an hour, finding that they 

 were rather rudely handled, all of them recovered, so as 

 to fly impatiently round the room in search of some 

 opening, by which they might escape. The window was 

 thrown up, and they soon found their way into the fields, 

 and were never seen again. 



A similar circumstance, though, from the place of its 

 discovery, it must refer probably to Sand Martins, was 

 related by a gentleman, who found two Swallows in a 

 sand-bank at Newton, near Stirling, quite dormant. 



Again at Belleville, in North America, a gentleman 

 observed one evening, a little after sun-set, late in the- 

 Autumn, a vast number of Swallows collected together, 

 high in the air, and hovering over a particular spot. 

 Having been informed by one of his school-fellows, when 

 a boy, that Swallows had been seen to dive into a mill- 

 pond and disappear, he determined to watch these, and 

 in about ten or fifteen minutes, as darkness came on, they 

 lowered their flight, and gathered themselves into a 

 smaller circle, and at length poured down into a very 

 large hollow sycamore-tree. It was observed that they 

 came out for several successive days, and returned in 

 the evening in the same manner. In the following year 

 the tree was cut down, the hollow was then found to be 

 about six feet in diameter, and filled, six inches deep, 

 with bones, feathers, and other remains of dead birds, 

 such, probably, as were too old, or too feeble to fly out 

 in the Spring. They apparently must have occupied the 

 tree for several years. Two other trees were subse- 

 quently seen, fallen, with similar appearances*. 



Again, about half a dozen Swallows were found a few 

 years ago, in a torpid state, in the trunk of a hollow tree, 

 by a countryman, who brought them to a respectable 

 person, by whom they were deposited in a desk, where 



* Phil. Mag., vol. L. p. 317. 



