36 FIELD AND FOREST. 



years ago he was working in the lumber woods in New Brunswick, it 

 being in the winter when there was a great depth of snow. The col- 

 ored cook, Ross by name, was digging out and enlarging the spring 

 in a bed of black mud or muck, when he came upon two bank swal- 

 lows apparently dead, but dry ; he ran immediately to the camp with 

 them to show what he had found in the mud. The men handled 

 them, full of curiosity, and in a few minutes, in the warm of the camp, 

 they began to move and after a little Avhile one flew out of the " smoke 

 hole" and fell upon the snow and there remained. The other was 

 taken by the cook and buried in the mud where he found it. 



Let me add the testimony of another gentleman on the same sub- 

 ject, but of different occurrence : While in conversation upon this 

 matter of bird hibernation with my friend Dr. G. H. Freeman of 

 Presque Isle, he said that his father had often told him of finding 

 swallows in the winter, and I requested him to write for a detailed ac- 

 count, he did so and I subjoin the letter of the old gentleman who is 

 a man to be trusted. 



Minot, Maine, June 25, 1877. 



When I was a boy about ten years old, say sixty-six years ago, my 

 father's hired man, John Chandler, went to the woods about fifty or 

 sixty rods from where we lived, to get firewood to haul to the house. 

 I went out with John on the ox sled to drive the oxen when he had 

 cut and put on a load of wood. He felled a large white maple tree 

 which had a hollow place towards the top, and when the tree fell it 

 broke where it was hollow and quite a number of birds such as I had 

 learned to call bank swallows, tumbled out frozen stiff ; this was in 

 the cold weather of winter. We picked up some of the birds and 

 John cut one with his axe in two pieces and found ice in the center 

 of the bird, to all appearances dead. At the suggestion of John (he 

 said they had life) I took two of the birds and carefully carried them 

 to the house, place them in a room where the sun shone in at the win- 

 dow and before night they flew about the room. They were of a 

 brownish color with white or light bellies such as we find around holes 

 in the sand banks in the summer. The next morning they were dead 

 and did not revive when warmed. — A. S. Freeman. 



It is worth noticing that these gentlemen, Messrs. Goss and Free- 

 man, although strangers to each other, agree that the birds found in 

 winter were bank-swallows. I desire to put on record these two in- 

 stances while the witnesses are alive and can reply for themselves, 

 should the matter be questioned. — Robt. R. McLeod. 



Houlton, Maine. 



