4 SOME CANADIAN BIRDS. 



short, broad and flat, and narrows rapidly to the tip. The gape is 

 wide and long, the mouth extending to beneath the eyes. 



The flight of the swallows combines great speed with rare grace 

 and skill. Few, if any, of the winged host can surpass them, and 

 few can even rival them. I have tested their speed with my homing 

 pigeons, and have been chagrined by the failure of my pets to win 

 the contest. Nor is the swallows' speed more remarkable than is 

 the skill by which they secure their insect prey. At full flight they 

 follow the dartings of the mites, turning and doubling with graceful 

 ease. The whole family are fond of bathing, and plunge into the 

 water while on the wing, rising immediately into the air and 

 shaking the drops from their plumes as they speed on. 



Do swallows hibernate ? is a question that has been asked so 

 frequently and has provoked so much controversy, that no bio- 

 graphical sketch of these birds would be complete without some 

 reference to the matter. Swallows may hibernate. There is 

 nothing in their physiology which renders a torpid state impossible. 

 But though several of the old observers stated explicitly that they 

 had seen swallows in a torpid state from which they revived — some 

 asserting that the swallows were dug out of the mud at tht bottom 

 of a pond — no modern observer has happened upon such a phe- 

 nomenon. And not only have no hibernated swallows been dis- 

 covered, but investigators have failed to find any reason for their 

 hibernating, while many reasons have been advanced to warrant the 

 assumption that a state of torpidity is not necessary for these birds. 

 They can get on very well without it, and such a condition would be 

 unnatural and inconsistent with their observed habits. True, their 

 food supply is cut off by the chilling air of early autumn that drives 

 the swarms of winged insects to their winter burrows ; but the 

 swallows are strong of wing, and with little fatigue are enabled to 

 journey southward far 6nough to get free from the cold wind and 

 into a land of plenty. With equal ease they return to their 

 northern homes when the summer's warmth revives the summer's 

 life. 



Their going and coming is somewhat mysterious. What prompts 

 them to go is a question we can answer, for no one now doubts 

 but that the scarcity of food is the prime cause for the fall migration 

 —the temperature having but little influence upon such hot-blooded 



