PERCHING BIRDS. 163 



well fit them for walking, and I never saw one make 

 more than two or perhaps three steps without using its 

 wings. As soon as the young ones can fly they 

 are in the habit of resting all together on the branch 

 of a tree, generally choosing a withered one, and here 

 the parent bird feeds them as she passes on the wing. 



The swallow is very vigilant to detect the presence of 

 any bird of prey ; one or two wild hurried shrieks are 

 uttered by the first who becomes aware of the danger, 

 the call to arms is immediately obeyed, and in a few 

 seconds all within hearing of the note of alarm are 

 gathered together, and fly wildly about their enemy. 

 The cuckoo is pursued in this way quite as much as any 

 of the hawks. 



How strange it is that the idea that swallows wintered 

 in the mud at the bottom of ponds and rivers should 

 ever have been a matter of belief with intelligent and 

 scientific men, and have been so long and pertinaciously 

 held ; and stranger still that in this boasted age of 

 enlightenment the wild story seems to be yet believed. 

 Only last year I met with a paragraph in a serial circu- 

 lating entirely amongst the educated classes, which 

 stated this as a fact about which there were not two 

 opinions. I opened my eyes in astonishment to read 

 such information as the following : " In Sweden the 

 swallows, as soon as the winter begins to approach, 

 plunge themselves into the lakes, where they remain 

 asleep and hide under the ice till the return of the sum- 

 mer, when revived by the new warmth, they come out 

 and fly away as formerly. While the lakes are frozen, 

 if somebody will break the ice in those parts where it 

 appears darker than the rest, he will find masses of 

 swallows cold, asleep, and half dead ; which, by taking 



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