246 HIRUNDINID^E. 



on all my rigging ; every rope was covered ; they hung on 

 one another like a swarm of bees, the decks and carving 

 were filled with them. They seemed almost famished and 

 spent, and were only feathers and bone ; but being re- 

 cruited with a night's rest, took their flight in the morn- 

 ing." In reference to their return by the same line of route, 

 Gilbert White, in his twenty-third letter, says, " If ever I 

 saw anything like actual migration, it was last Michaelmas 

 day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning ; at 

 first there was a vast fog ; but by the time I was got 

 seven or eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun 

 broke out into a delicate warm day. We were then on 

 a large heath or common, and I could discern, as the mist 

 began to break away, great numbers of Swallows cluster- 

 ing on the stunted shrubs and bushes, as if they had 

 roosted there all night. As soon as the air became clear 

 and pleasant, they all were on the wing at once ; and by a 

 placid and easy flight, proceeded on southward towards the 

 sea ; after this I did not see any more flocks, only now and 

 then a straggler." 



Another line of migration pursued by these birds, as well 

 as many others of our summer visitors, is by Malta, Sicily, 

 and Italy, and still further to the eastward. Mr. Thomp- 

 son, of Belfast, has published in the eighth volume of the 

 Annals of Natural History an interesting account of the 

 migratory birds seen by him while sailing in the Mediter- 

 ranean in the spring of 1841, from which the following 

 are extracts. " Having been favoured by my friend Cap- 

 tain Graves, R.N., with an invitation to accompany him 

 during the projected government survey of the island of 

 Candia, I, with Mr. E. Forbes, who had received from the 

 Admiralty the honorary appointment of Naturalist on the 

 occasion, left Malta, in H. M. S. Beacon, on the 21st of 

 April. The first port we sailed for was Navarino, for the 



