35 



world they go, is that of Sir Charles Wager, first 

 lord of the admiralty; who relates, that in one 

 of his voyages home, as he came into soundings 

 of our channel, a great flock of swallows settled 

 on his rigging : every rope was covered with 

 them : they hung on one another like a swarm 

 of bees : the decks and carvings were filled 

 with them : they seemed spent and famished, 

 and, to use his own expression, were only fea- 

 thers and bones ; but recruited with a night's 

 rest, they resumed their flight in the morning. 



Peter Collison, F. R. S., in a letter to the 

 Hon. I. T. Klein, mentions, that a similar cir- 

 cumstance happened to Captain, Wright, in a 

 voyage from Philadelphia to London : the par- 

 ticulars of which, it appears, the captain ne- 

 glected to relate*. 



* Collison adds, " I have for many years been very 

 watchful in taking notice of the times when the swal- 

 lows leave us, and I think I have twice actually seen 

 them taking their flight. At two different years (on the 

 2?th and 29th of September,) walking in my garden at 

 noon, on very sunshiny days, and looking up into the 

 sky, I distinctly saw an innumerable number of swallows, 



