LIFE OF WILSON. clxxxvii 



Away with such absurdities! they are unworthy of a serious 

 refutation. I should be pleased to meet with a man who has 

 been personally more conversant with birds than myself, who 

 has followed them in their wide and devious routes studied 

 their various manners mingled with them, and marked their 

 peculiarities more than I have done ; yet the miracle of a resus- 

 citated Swallow, in the depth of winter, from the bottom of a 

 millpond, is, I confess, a phenomenon in ornithology that I 

 have never met with. " 



The subject of the supposed torpidity of swallows has em- 

 ployed many writers, but unfortunately too few of those, whose 

 practical knowledge enabled them to speak with that certainty, 

 which should always give authority to writings on natural his- 

 tory. Reasoning a priori ought to have taught mankind a 

 more rational opinion, than that which the advocates of hyber- 

 nation have unthinkingly promulgated. And is it not sur- 

 prising that as experiments are so easy to be instituted, they 

 should have been so seldom resorted to, in order to determine 

 a problem which many may suppose to be intricate, but which, 

 in effect, is one of the simplest, or most easy to be ascertained, 

 of any in the whole animal kingdom? It is a fact, that all the 

 experiments which have been made, on the subject of the hy- 

 bernation of birds, have failed to give countenance, in the most 

 remote degree, to this irrational doctrine. 



From my personal experience, and from my earliest youth I 

 have been conversant with the habits of birds, I feel myself 

 justified in asserting, that, in the whole class Jives, there has 



ter, and they alone are so overcome by the cold as to be rendered torpid, the 

 difference must be found in their anatomical structure, and in their habits of life. 

 " Now, in the first place, it is certain that they have, in common with other 

 birds, the three great functions of respiration, circulation, and assimilation: the 

 similarity of their organs, and every circumstance in their mode of living, 

 prove that they are subject to the same laws: they have also a very high tem- 

 perature; and are peculiarly organized for rapid and long flight. The size of 

 their lungs, the lightness of their bones, and the buoyancy of their feathers, 

 render it absolutely impossible to sink them in water without a considerable 

 weight; and they die instantly for want of air," Reeve on Torpidity, p. 43, 



