LIFE OF WILSON. cxxiii 



from morning to night, that the light of heaven itself, the sky, the trees, or 

 any other common ohjects of nature, are not better known than the swallows. 

 We welcome their first appearance with delight, as the faithful harbingers and 

 companions of flowery spring, and ruddy summer ; and when, after a long, 

 frost-bound and "boisterous winter, we hear it announced that the 'Swallows are 

 come !' what a train of charming ideas are associated with the simple tidings !" 



The following remarks on the current doctrine of the hybernation of Swal- 

 lows are worthy of note. My object in introducing them into this place is 

 twofold : to exemplify our author's talent for copious and equable composition ; 

 and to afford myself an opportunity of adding my feeble testimony to his, on a 

 subject which one should suppose would have been long ago definitively ascer- 

 tained. 



" The wonderful activity displayed by these birds, forms a striking contrast 

 to the slow habits of most other animals. It may be fairly questioned whether 

 among the whole feathered tribes, which Heaven has formed to adorn this part 

 of creation, there be any that, in the same space of time, pass over an equal 

 extent of surface with the Swallow. Let a person take his stand on a fine 

 summer evening, by a new-mown field, meadow or river shore, for a short time, 

 and among the numerous individuals of this tribe that flit before him, fix his 

 eye on a particular one, and follow, for a while, all its circuitous labyrinths — 

 its extensive sweeps — its sudden, rapidly reiterated, zigzag excursions, and 

 then attempt, by the powers of mathematics, to calculate the length of the va- 

 rious lines it describes ; alas ! even his omnipotent fluxions would avail him 

 little here, and he would soon abandon the task in despair. Yet, that some 

 conception may be formed of this extent, let us suppose that this little bird 

 flies, in his usual way, at the rate of one mile in a minute, which, from the 

 many experiments that I have made, I believe to be within the truth ; and that 

 he is so engaged for ten hours every day; and further, that this active life is 

 extended to ten years (many of our small birds being known to live much 

 longer, even in a state of domestication), the amount of all these, allowing 

 three hundred and sixty-five days to a year, would give us two millions one 

 hundred and ninety thousand miles : upwards of eighty-seven times the cir- 

 cumference of the globe ! Yet this winged seraph, if I may so speak, who, in 

 a few days, and at will, can pass from the borders of the arctic regions to the 

 torrid zone, is forced, when winter approaches, to descend to the bottoms of 

 lakes, rivers, and mill-ponds, to bury itself in the mud with eels and snapping 

 turtles ; or to creep ingloriously into a cavern, a rat-hole, or a hollow tree, 

 there to doze with snakes, toads, and other reptiles, until the return of spring ! 

 Is not this true, yc wise men of Europe and America, who have published so 

 many credible narratives upon this subject ? 



"The geese, the ducks, the catbird, and even the wren, which creeps about 

 our outhouses in summer like a mouse, are all acknowledged to be migratory, 

 and to pass into southern regions at the approach of winter; — the swallow 

 alone, on whom Heaven has conferred superior powers of wing, must sink into 

 torpidity at the bottom of our rivers, or doze all winter in the caverns of the 

 earth. I am myself something of a traveller, and foreign countries afford 

 many novel sights : should I assert, that in some of my peregrinations I had 



