138 SWALLOW. 



nicated to me by my friend, the Rev. II. P. Alington, as 

 having occurred on the 26th. of September, in the present 

 year, 1851; a day I we'll remember for the dreadful storm 

 which came on at night, with an unusually sudden change 

 of wind the cause of most disastrous and numerous ship- 

 wrecks on all sides of the island, and noted in my diary as 

 an awful gale. He says, 'I was dining last week at my 

 brother's, near Spilsby, when a medical gentleman, Dr. Hunt, 

 who lives at Addlethorpe, below Spilsby, on the bleak marsh 

 near the sea, told me a curious anecdote relative to the 

 severity of the weather on Friday, the 26th. of September, 

 1851. He said that so intense was the cold on that day, 

 that in the evening he picked up no less than ninety-two 

 Swallows on the ground, young chiefly, completely starved;' 

 (starved, I must here observe, means, in the north of England, 

 perished by cold as well as by hunger.) 'They were put 

 into a hamper, and the following morning being mild, they 

 all flew away quite well. William Dodson, Esq., of Claxby, 

 Chairman of the quarter sessions at Louth, being present, 

 followed up the conversation by saying, (in what year I 

 could not make out, as there was a large party, and I had 

 no opportunity of asking questions,) that 011 an exceedingly 

 cold day, all the Swallows congregated on his window-sills, 

 not singly, but in separate heaps, with their heads all one 

 way, one piled on the other. These balls heaved up and 

 down with the breathing of the birds, and upon the cessation 

 of the storm, when the outermost ones flew away, the lower 

 ones were found smothered in considerable numbers.' Another 

 somewhat similar case is on record in the 'Zoologist,' page 

 2604, though without the like fatal result. 



A great number of Swallows and Martins were found dead 

 in barns, sheds, and churchyards in various parts of the 

 county of Norfolk, on the 10th. and llth. of May, 1849, 

 the weather being very cold and boisterous. 'No doubt 

 they perished either from the direct effects of the cold, or 

 from the destruction of the insects on which they generally 

 feed.' 



Swallows have been kept for two or three years by judicious 

 and careful treatment. Bewick records instances of this, as 

 established by Mr. James Pearson, of London, and also by 

 M. Natterer, of Vienna. They may also be tamed, as he 

 shews in an interesting account, furnished to him by the 

 Kev. Walter Trevelyan, of Long Witton, Northumberland. 



