222 BARN SWALLOW. 



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 circumference of the globe ! Yet this little 

 winged seraph, if I may so speak, who, in a few days, and at will, can 

 pavss 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, ye wise men of Europe and America, who have pub- 

 lished so many credible narratives on this subject ? 



The Geese, the Ducks, the Cat-bird, and even the Wren, which creeps 

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

 be migratory, and to pass to southern regions at the approach of 

 winter ; — the Swallow alone, on whom Heaven has conferred superior 

 powers of wing, must sink in 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 met with a nation of 

 Indians, all of whom, old and young, at the commencement of cold 

 weather, descend to the bottom of their lakes and rivers, and there 

 remain until the breaking up of frost ; nay, should I affirm, that thou- 

 sands of people in the neighborhood of this city, regularly undergo the 

 same semi-annual submersion — that I myself had fished up a whole 

 family of these from the bottom of the Schuylkill, where they had lain 

 torpid all winter, carried them home, and brought them all comfortably 

 to themselves again. Should I even publish this in the learned pages 

 of the Transactions of our Philosophical Society, who would believe 

 me ? Is then the organization of a Swallow less delicate than that of 

 a man ? Can a bird, whose vital functions are destroyed by a short 

 j)rivation of pure air and its usual food, sustain, for six months, a situa- 

 tion where the most robust man would perish in a few hours or minutes ? 

 Away with such absurdities ! — They are unworthy of a serious refuta- 

 tion. I should be pleased to meet with a man who has been personally 

 more conversant with birds than myself, who has followed them in their 

 wide and devious routes — studied their various manners — mingled with 

 and marked their peculiarities more than I have done ; yet the miracle 

 of a resuscitated Swallow, in the depth of winter, from the bottom of a 

 mill-pond, is, I confess, a phenomenon in ornithology that I have never 

 met with. 



What better evidence have we that these fleet-winged tribes, instead 

 of following the natural and acknowledged migrations of many other 

 birds, lie torpid all winter in hollow trees, caves and other subterraneous 

 recesses ? That the Chimney Swallow, in the early part of summer, 



