346 Migration of Srw allows. 



attention to circumstances, I have thought myself mis- 

 taken ; and that the few instances exhibited, were ex- 

 ceptions to the generally credited averment of their 

 migration ; and not solid evidence of the general fact ; 

 in proof whereof those partial testimonies are pro- 

 duced. 



What has been said by that able and much lament- 

 ed ornithologist — Wilson^ — has tended to eradicate 

 any remnants of credit, in which I have regarded my 

 former opinion. But I have never ceased to hold my- 

 self open to conviction ; should undeniable proofs be 

 brought forward. 



Through several years past, some members of ^^The 

 Blockley and Merion Society of Agriculture and rural 

 Economy,^'' whose chair I have long had the pleasure 

 to occupy, have related some of the strongest circum- 

 stances, in proof of the hybernation of swallows, of the 

 bank and chimney species, I had ever before heard. 

 The country people, in the vicinity of an aged poplar^ 

 growing on the western bank of the Schuylkill, nearly 

 opposite the soap stone quarry, and about a mile from 

 Crichthaum'' s mill, generally believed, that vast num- 

 bers of chimney birds wintered in this ancient hollow 

 tree. Season after season, they had, what they deemed, 

 incontrovertible proofs. The birds were seen, in thou- 

 sands, retiring into a large aperture, forty feet from the 

 ground, in the beginning of winter. And, at the earli- 

 est opening of the spring, they made their appearance 

 again. In sunny and warm days, they had been seen, 

 coming out and returning, in great numbers ; and re- 

 tiring finally, as was supposed, into these their winter- 

 quarters. The circumstantial evidence appeared, to 



