558 SWALLOWS. Class IL 



ill less than half an hour brought ashore fifty 

 dozen ; for they had nothing more to do than 

 to draw the willow twigs through their hands, 

 the birds never stirring till they were taken. 



The northern naturalists will perhaps say, 

 that this assembly met for the purpose of 

 plunging into their subaqueous winter quarters ; 

 but was that the case, they would never escape 

 discovery in a river perpetually fished as the 

 Thames; some of them must inevitably be 

 brought up in the nets that harass that water. 



The second notion has great antiquity on its 

 side. Aristotle* and Plini)'\ give, as their be- 

 lief, that swallows do not remove very far from 

 their summer habitation, but winter in the hol- 

 lows of rocks, and during that time lose their 

 feathers. The former part of their opinion has 

 been adopted by several ingenious men 5 and of 

 late, several proofs have been brought of some 

 species, at lest, having been discovered in a 

 torpid state. ]\Ir. CoUinson'^ favored us with 

 the evidence of three gentlemen, eye-witnesses 

 to numbers of sand martins being drawn out of 

 a cliff on the Rhine, in the month of March, 



* Hist. an. Q35. f L'lh. 10. c. 24. 



X By letter, dated Ju7ie 14, 1764. 



