SWALLOWS. 239 



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 dis 

 covery, it must refer probably to Sand-Martins, was related by 

 a gentleman, who found two Swallows in a sand-bank at New- 

 ton near Stirling, quite dormant. 



Again, at Belleville, in North America, a gentleman observed 

 one evening, a little after sunset, 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 sub- 

 sequently 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 they remained for- 

 gotten till the following spring, when one morning, on hearing 

 a noise, he opened the desk, and found one of them fluttering 

 about ; the others also began to show signs of life, and, upon 

 being placed out of doors in the sun, speedily arranged their 

 plumage, took wing, and disappeared. 



On the 2d of November 1829, at Loch Ransa, in the island 



of Arran, a man, while digging in a place where a pond had 



been lately drained off, discovered two Swallows in a state of 



torpor: on placing them near the fire they recovered. One 



* Phil. Mag., vol. 1. p. 317. 



