DO SWALLOWS HIBERNATE! 173 



the bank- or cliff-swallows, they are quite contented to 

 seek their food flitting over fields and about the build- 

 ings wherein are placed their nests. They are not to be 

 associated with water or its vicinity, any more than with 

 the driest stretches of dusty fields. 



How, then, are we to explain the soaked appearance 

 of those seen by Kalm, sitting on posts and planks ? I 

 think the preceding sentence explains it. He saw these 

 birds first on the 10th of April, and on the next day far 

 greater numbers of them, sitting on posts and planks. 

 They had but reached their destination probably had 

 just completed a protracted flight of hundreds of miles 

 and were seen early in the morning. Thoroughly fagged 

 at the end of a long journey, and early in the day, when 

 all else was dripping with the moisture of rain-like dew, 

 would it not be strange indeed if these new-comers, 

 like all animate and inanimate nature about them, 

 were not " as wet. as if they had been just come out of 

 the sea"? 



But the barn-swallow asks no lengthy holiday on his 

 arrival. He quickly recuperates, and the duties of the 

 hour are squarely met. If, during the summer, his wan- 

 derings are less about water than land, it is to the water 

 that he goes first, when ready to construct his nest or re- 

 pair the structure of last summer. By the water's edge, 

 he carefully mixes the adhering mud that forms the ex- 

 terior of his house. Here, we have a repetition of what I 

 mentioned with reference to the cliff-swallows. Just at 

 the time when the supposed mud-encased swallow should 

 leave his submarine abode, and all bedraggled, wet and 

 worn should be seen spreading himself in the sun, and 

 drying out, in readiness for a summer's campaign then 

 do we really find the beautiful barn-swallows busy at the 

 water's edge, and often well wet through ; but, instead 



