76 EASY-CHAIR MEMORIES 



a row waiting to be fed by the old ones. 

 Then these young ones would fly about from 

 beam to beam evidently practising the art 

 of " aviation " and in two or three days, and 

 just before the general migration, they were 

 gone. I wondered how these young things 

 would stand that long flight. Probably they 

 would be among those hundreds that were 

 found dead on our southern coasts. It was 

 unusually late even for a second brood. I 

 was reading Pepys' Diary the other day and 

 came upon the following remark about swallows: 

 11 Swallows are often brought up in their nets 

 out of the mudd from under water, hanging 

 together to some twigg or other, dead in ropes, 

 and brought to the fire will come to life " (Pepys' 

 Diary, December n, 1663). 



Izaak Walton says : "It is well known that 

 swallows, and bats, and wagtails, which are 

 called half-year birds . . . about Michaelmas 

 leave us for a hotter climate. Yet some of 

 them that have been left behind their fellows, 

 have been found many thousands at a time, in 

 hollow trees, or clay caves, where they have 

 been observed to live and sleep out the whole 

 winter without meat." 



