SWALLOWS. 243 



On the 16 tli of November, 1826, a gentleman residing- 

 near Loch Awe, in Scotland, having occasion to examine an 

 outhouse, used as a cart- shed, saw an unusual appearance 

 upon one of the rafters, which crossed and supported the 

 thatched roof. Upon mounting a ladder, he found to his 

 astonishment, that this was a group of Chimney- Swallows 

 (Sirundo rustled), which had taken up their Winter quarters 

 in this exposed situation. The group consisted of five, com- 

 pletely torpid, and none of the tribe to which they belonged 

 had been seen for five or six weeks previously : he took them 

 in his hand as they lay closely and coldly huddled together, 

 and conveyed them to his house, in order to exhibit them as 

 objects of curiosity to the other members of his family. For 

 some time they remained to all appearance lifeless ; but the 

 temperature of the apartment into which they were carried 

 being considerably raised, by a good turf fire, they gradually 

 evinced symptoms of reanimation ; and in less than a quarter 

 of an hour, finding that they were rather rudely handled, all 



them recovered, so as to fly impatiently round the room 

 search of some opening, by which they might escape, 

 he window was thrown up, and they soon found their way 

 into the fields, and were never seen again. 



A similar circumstance, though, from the place of its 

 discovery, it must refer probably to Sand Martins, was 

 elated by a gentleman, who found two Swallows in a sand- 



nk at Newton, near Stirling, quite dormant. 



Again at Belleville, in North America, a gentleman ob- 



ved one evening, a little after sun-set, late in the Autumn, 

 , vast number of Swallows collected together, high in the 

 and hovering over a particular spot. Having been 

 iformed by one of his school-fellows, when a boy, that 

 Swallows had been seen to dive into a mill-pond and dis- 

 appear, he determined to watch these, and in about ten or 

 fifteen minutes, as darkness came on, they lowered their 

 flight, and gathered themselves into a smaller circle, and at 

 length poured down into a very large hollow sycamore-tree. 

 It was observed that they came out for several successive 

 days, and returned in the evening in the same manner. In 



B 2 



