376 DO SWALLOWS HIBERNATE t 



ular the difQculty of understanding the alleged abruptness 

 of the transition from activity to torpor. I cannot consider 

 the evidence as inadmissible, and must admit that the alleged 

 facts are as well attested, according to ordinary rules of evi- 

 dence, as any in ornithology. It is useless as well as unscien- 

 tific to pooh-pooh the notion. The asserted facts are nearly 

 identical with the known cases of many reptiles and batra- 

 chians. They are strikingly like the known cases of many bats. 

 They accord in general with the recognized conditions of 

 hibernation in many mammals. 



It is well to remember that this thing was started in very 

 early times, before there was such a thing as a science of orni- 

 thology, and before anything was fully explained respecting 

 the migrations of birds. Swallows were among the first birds 

 whose movements were noted with particularity. Their abund- 

 ance rendered them favorable as well as familiar objects of 

 study in this regard ; and the regularity of their movements, 

 as well as the suddenness of their disappearance and reappear- 

 ance, gave rise to the wildest speculation. This was at a time 

 when nothing was too absurd or too preposterous to be counte- 

 nanced by the best science that the times afforded. I can lay 

 my hand, for instance, on papers of the period discussing the 

 migration of birds to the moon — the falling of the little quad- 

 rupeds called lemmings in showers from the clouds — the origin 

 of Brant Geese from barnacles that grew on trees — ei id genus 

 omne. Some people still argued that the earth was flat, still 

 sought perpetual motion and the square of the circle. Just 

 as soon, then, as the actual and normal migratiou of Swallows 

 was determined, the alleged accounts of the torpidity and 

 hibernation of Swallows were naturally consigned to the same 

 limbo that held the barnacle-geese and the cloudy lemmings, 

 and the mud-theorists were hooted out of court. But one 

 swallow does not make a summer ; * nor does the migration of a 

 million Swallows into Africa or South America prove that some 

 other Swallows cannot hibernate in the mud. This, however, 



* This familiar saying has an application far beyond its literal and most 

 obvious signification. "Vna hirundo non facit ver, Mia xe^i'S'^v iap ov izoisi' 

 hoc est, vnus dies non sat est ad parandam virtutem aut eruditionem : ant 

 non vnnm aliqnod benefactum, benedictumve isufHcit ad hoc, vt viri boni, 

 ant boni oratoris cognome promearis : plurimis enim virtutib. ea res costat. 

 Aut vt certum aliquld cognoscas, non satis est vnica ooniectura. Siquidem 

 fieri potest vt vna qusepiam hirundo casu maturius appareat. Sumptum ab 

 hirundinis n atura quse veris est nnncia," Gesn., De Aviius, ed. 1617, p. 500. 



