ILLUSTRATION'S. 91 



Oc Comparing these descriptions, of the four greatest epic poets who have a- 

 do .'M, can there be any hesitation in awarding the palm of superiori* 



t; 



or wild goose, when formed into a phalanx for migration, 

 v>1 a wedge. 



...ients were so much puzzled about the migration of birds, 

 shat \iey su prosed it extended to the moon, yet it is now no longer a mystery. 

 T . departure of the swallow has been a subject of more speculation and fable 

 thd".' that of any other bird. The estimable Bartram told dr. Barton, that be 

 haa seen, in the autumn, lame flocks of all our four species of swallows, on 

 th'-u' return southward from Pennsylvania, through Carolina, Florida, &c. and iu 

 th" spring on their return to the northward again. Fragments of tht Natural 

 History, ifc. 



Catesby supposes, that birds of passage, particularly swallows, pass to the same 

 latitude in the southern hemisphere, as the northern latitude from whence 

 they came ; that they retire, for instance, from Carolina to Brazil, and particu- 

 larly, th.it our chimney swallow corresponds with the description of Margra- 

 tius* andorinha, which he considers a fuil confirmation of his hypothesis. The 

 european swallows probably retire to Africa. Adanson, when within fifty leagues 

 of Senegal, caught, from the shrouds of the vessel, four european swallows. 

 This was on the 2d of October, 1749, and they were then retiring from the ap- 

 proach of winter to Senegal, in tiie torrid zone, where they are never seen but 

 at this season of the year, along with wagtails, kites, quails, and other birds 

 of passage, and they only spend the winter, without building nests, or produciug 

 young. Our chimney swallow is not known in Europe. And our hirundo rus- 

 tica is not precisely like that of Europe ; it disagrees particularly in the colour 

 f the breast, which, iu the latter, is white, like that of our bank swallow, 

 whereas ours is ferruginous. Kalm says, that they nearly correspond in colour, 

 but that there appears a small difference in the note ; they are, probably, varie- 

 ties of the same species. Dr. Barton thinks that our bank martin, or sand swal- 

 low, is not the birundo riparia of Linnaeus. Kalm, in his voyage to this country, 

 saw. on the first of September, about one thousand miles from our coast, some, 

 land birds flying about the dlip, which he took for sand martins, (hirundo ripa 

 ria ;) sometimes they settled on the ship, or on the sails ; they were of a gray- 

 ish brown colour on the back, their breast white, and the tail somewhat furca 

 ted. They were driven away by a heavy shower of rain. On the next day a 

 swallow fluttered about the ship, and sometimes settled on the mast, and sever 

 al times it approached the cabin windows, as if willing to take shelter there 

 Ei ' ^s afterward, within the american gulf, an owl and a little bird set- 

 tled on the eails. On the 12th of September, a wood pecker of a speckled gray 



