LIFE OF WILSON. clxxxv 



may be fairly questioned whether among the whole feathered 

 tribes, which heaven has formed to adorn this part of creation, 

 there be any that, in the same space of time, pass over an equal 

 extent of surface with the Swallow. Let a person take his 

 stand on a fine summer evening, by a new-mown field, meadow 

 or river shore, for a short time, and among the numerous indi- 

 viduals of this tribe that flit before him, fix his eye on a parti- 

 cular one, and follow, for a while, all its circuitous labyrinths 

 its extensive sweeps its sudden, rapidly reiterated, zigzag 

 excursions, and then attempt, by the powers of mathematics, 

 to calculate the length of the various lines it describes; alas! 

 even his omnipotent fluxions would avail him little here, and 

 he would soon abandon the task in despair. Yet, that some 

 conception may be formed of this extent, let us suppose that 

 this little bird flies, in his usual way, at the rate of one mile in 

 a minute, which, from the many experiments that I have made, 

 I believe to be within the truth; and that he is so engaged for 

 ten hours every day; and further, that this active life is extend- 

 ed to ten years (many of our small birds being known to live 

 much longer, even in a state of domestication,) the amount of 

 all these, allowing three hundred and sixty-five days to a year, 

 would give us two millions one hundred and ninety thousand 

 miles: upwards of eighty-seven times the circumference of the 

 globe ! Yet this winged seraph, if I may so speak, who, in a 

 few days, and at will, can pass from the borders of the arctic 

 regions to the torrid zone, is forced, when winter approaches, 

 to descend to the bottoms of lakes, rivers, and millponds, to 

 bury itself in the mud with eels and snapping turtles; or to 

 creep ingloriously into a cavern, a rat hole, or a hollow tree, 

 there to doze with snakes, toads, and other reptiles, until the 

 return of spring! Is not this true ye wise men of Europe and 

 America, who have published so many credible narratives upon 

 this subject? The geese, the ducks, the catbird, and even the wren, 

 which creeps about our outhouses in summer like a mouse, arc 

 all acknowledged to be migratory, and to pass into southern 



regions at the approach of winter; the swallow alone, on 

 VOL. i. A a 



