392 NA TURE-STUD Y RE VIEW [16 :9— Dec, 1920 



the mud of river banks. White writes, "A Swedish naturaHst is 

 so much persuaded of that fact, that he talks in his calendar of 

 Flora, as familiarly of the swallows going under water in the 

 beginning of September, as he would of his poultry going to roost 

 a little before sunset." In another letter he writes, "One of my 

 neighbors, an intelligent and observing man, informs me that, in 

 the beginning of May, and about ten minutes before eight o'clock 

 in the evening he discovered a great cluster of house-swallows, 

 thirty at least he supposes, perching on a willow that hung over 

 the verge of James Knight's pond. His attention was first drawn 

 by the twittering of these birds, which sat motionless in a row on 

 the bough, with their heads all one way, and, by their weight, 

 pressing down the twig so that it nearly touched the water. 

 Repeated accounts of this sort, spring and fall, induce us greatly to 

 suspect that house-swallows have some strong attachment to 

 water, independent of the matter of food ; and though they may 

 not retire into that element, yet they may conceal themselves in 

 the banks of pools or rivers during the uncomfortable months of 

 winter." 



In 1767 White put very little faith in these stories for he says, 

 "As to swallows being found in a torpid state dtiring the winter in 

 in the Isle of Wight, or any part of this country, I never heard any 

 such account worth attending to. But a clergyman, of an inquisi- 

 tive turn, assures me that, when he was a great boy, some work- 

 men, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in 

 spring, found two or three swifts among the rubbish, which were, 

 at first appearance, dead, but, on being carried toward the fire, 

 revived. He told me that, out of his great care to preserve them, 

 he put them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fires 

 where they were suffocated." "Another intelligent person has 

 informed me that, while he was a school boy, in Sussex, a great 

 fragment of the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach, 

 and that many people found swallows among the rubbish ; but, on 

 my questioning him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to 

 my no small disappointment, he answered me in the negative: 

 but that others assured him they did." In 1769 he seemed quite 

 convinced of migration. He 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 that I was seven or eight miles from home towards the 



