BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR 
The swifts, last to come, are also first to go, 
spending less time in the land of their birth 
than either swallows or martins. The fact 
that an occasional swallow has been seen in 
this country during the winter months finds 
expression in the adage that " one swallow 
does not make a summer," and it was no 
doubt this occasional apparition that in a less 
enlightened age seemed to warrant the extra- 
ordinary belief, which still ekes out a pre- 
carious existence in misinformed circles, that 
these birds, instead of wintering abroad, 
retire hi a torpid condition to the bottom of 
lakes and ponds. It cannot be denied that 
these waters have occasionally, when dredged 
or drained, yielded a stray skeleton of a 
swallow, but it should be evident to the 
most homely intelligence that such debris 
merely indicates careless individuals that, 
in passing over the water, got their plumage 
waterlogged and were then drowned. It seems 
strange that Gilbert White, so accurate an 
observer of birds, should actually have toyed 
with this curious belief, though he leant rather 
to the more reasonable version of occasional 
hybernation in caves or other sheltered 
