78 SWALLOWS. 



sun broke out into a delicate warm day. We 

 were then on a large heath or common, and I 

 could discern, as the mist began to break away, 

 great numbers of swallows (hirundines rustics) 

 clustering on the stunted shrubs and bushes, as if 

 they had roosted there all night. As soon as the 

 air became clear and pleasant, they were all on 

 the wing at once; and, by a placid and easy 

 flight, proceeded on southward, towards the sea : 

 after this I did not see any more flocks, only now 

 and then a straggler. 



I cannot agree with those persons that assert, 

 that the swallow kind disappear some and some, 

 gradually, as they come, for the bulk of them 

 seem to withdraw at once ; only some stragglers 

 stay behind a long while, and do never, there is 

 the greatest reason to believe, leave this island. 

 Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and to come 

 forth in a warm day, as bats do continually of a 

 warm evening, after they have disappeared for 

 weeks. For a very respectable gentleman assured 

 me, that, as he was walking with some friends 

 under Merton-wall, on a remarkably hot noon, 

 either in the last week in December, or the first 

 week in January, he espied three or four swallows 

 huddled together on the moulding of one of the 



which we do not, and cannot, comprehend, though in some 

 measure dependent on the want of food or climate con- 

 genial to the system of each, and which acts almost 

 without the will of the individual. Neither this, however, 

 nor the duties incumbent on incubation, can be the only 

 exciting causes, as we may judge by the partial migrations 

 of some to different parts of the same country, where 

 food and the conveniences for breeding are alike ; by the 

 partial migration only, of a species from one country to 

 another, differing decidedly in temperature, and where the 

 visiting species thrives equally with the resident one ; and by 

 the males of some species migrating, while the females re- 

 main. W. J. 



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