xxxiv INTRODUCTION 



resurrection; and he addeth, for proof thereof, that the 

 fishermen, who make holes in the ice to dip up such fish with 

 their nets as resort thither for breathing, do sometimes light 

 on these swallows, congealed in clods of a shiny substance, 

 and that carrying them home to their stoves, the warmth 

 restoreth them to life and flight. This I have seen confirmed 

 also by the relation of a Venetian ambassador employed in 

 Poland, and heard avowed by travellers in those parts ; 

 wherethrough I am induced to give it a place of probability 

 in my mind, and of report in this treatise." 



This passage well illustrates the way in which a mischievous 

 legend may spread in an unscientific age through the medium 

 of a single book, like an epidemic from a single spot, and 

 infect the ideas even of sensible observers of nature. Nearly 

 a century later we find that the best ornithologist of his day 

 had not altogether escaped the infection. Willughby, whose 

 Ornithology was edited by Ray in English in 1678, wrote 

 thus of the swallows : * 



" What becomes of swallows in winter time, whether they 

 fly into other countries, or lie torpid in hollow trees, and the 

 like places, neither are natural historians agreed, nor indeed 

 can we certainly determine. To us it seems more probable 

 that they fly away into hot countries, viz., Egypt, Ethiopia, 

 etc., than that they lurk in hollow trees, or holes of rocks and 

 ancient buildings, or lie in water under the ice, as Olaus 

 Magnus reports." 



If Willughby had lived longer and pursued his travels he 

 might have succeeded in stamping out all traces of this in- 

 fectious myth in England ; but he died young, and though 

 disinclined himself to believe it, his language in this passage 

 only served to perpetuate the false tradition. 2 Another 

 century passed, and even then the most acute observer who 

 had yet appeared in England was unable wholly to rid his 

 mind of it. We may well ask how this was : for to anyone 

 accustomed to weigh evidence it will be quite clear that none 

 of the passages quoted above could be said to contain a 



1 Page 211. 



2 Twenty years later Olaus' tales were reproduced in full in Dr. O'Connor's 

 History of Poland, vol. ii., p. 85 (1698). 



