176 PETER COLLINSON AND JOHN BARTRAM CH. 



but offer a courteous deference ; at the same time he 

 urged that Linnaeus should be able to demonstrate the 

 presence of special organs in the body of the bird to 

 enable it to perform this feat of living under water. It 

 is doubtful whether Linnaeus was ever convinced of his 

 error, one that was common to the age, and to which 

 White of Selborne and Dr. Johnson also gave credence. 

 Collinson brought the subject more than once before the 

 Royal Society, citing facts observed by such travellers 

 as Adanson and Sir C. Wager ; also that it was the 

 custom of boys by the river Rhine in springtime to draw 

 out martins from their deep holes in the cliffs, where some 

 of these birds had rested torpid all winter : others had 

 migrated to the south. Barrington and others as per- 

 sistently maintained the old hypothesis. 1 



Collinson had entered the Royal Society in 1728 : 

 four years later he was elected on the Council, and he 

 served on that body at intervals for upwards of thirty 

 years. He brought before the society many observa- 

 tions of his own in natural history, and was always on 

 the look-out to put forward others made by his friends. 

 In the provision and arrangement of papers for the 

 society's meetings he took an active part. The topics 

 of his essays include the hardness of shells, the stone 

 found in the Belluga fish, crabs, and how they can break 

 off their own legs, the cicada beetle, the libella or may- 

 fly, and the fossil teeth of large mammals. Nor were 

 his interests limited to the pursuit of natural history. 

 Literature of many kinds attracted him. When in 1731 

 a subscription library was set on foot by the exertions 

 of Franklin at Philadelphia, Collinson undertook without 

 reward the office of agent for the library in London, and 

 for thirty years transacted its business, assisting in the 

 choice of books, and disbursing a considerable annual 

 remittance for making additions to its shelves. With 

 the first consignment of books he sent two gifts of his 



1 The statement in Linnaeus' Regnum Animate that swallows hibernate 

 is however crossed out in Linnaeus' own handwriting in a copy preserved 

 by the Linnean Society. See also Corresp. Linn. ; Phil. Trans, li. pt. 2, 459, 

 liii. 101 ; Hon. D. Barrington, Miscellanies, pp. 174 sqq. 



