PERIODICAL BIRDS TO BECOME TORPID. 107 
enfeebled, as almost to suffer themselves to be taken 
with the hand. 
Severe and long-continued frosts, especially when 
accompanied with snow, often prove very fatal to the 
Redwing (Zurdus iliacus); and under such circum- 
stances, I have occasionally found individuals of this 
species dead or in a dying state. 
Numerous instances of a similar kind might be 
selected from works on natural history ; but two 
will suffice. I quote from “A Catalogue of the 
Norfolk and Suffolk Birds, with Remarks,” by the 
Rev. R. Sheppard and the Rev. W. Whitear, pub- 
lished in the ‘Transactions of the Linnean Society,’ 
vol. xv. “The following extraordinary circumstance 
in the natural history of the Swallow, which oc- 
curred at Christ Church, Ipswich (the residence of 
the Rev. Mr. Fonnereau), very forcibly illustrates 
the unusual coldness and backwardness of the season. 
‘On the mornings of the 5th and 6th of June, 1816, 
the gardeners could have taken up hundreds of 
these birds in their hands; they were collected in 
knots, and sat on the grass in parcels of thirty and 
forty. This, there is reason to believe, was owing 
both to cold and hunger’ (‘Suffolk Chronicle,’ 
June 15th, 1816). The same summer many House- 
Martins were found dead on the ground in Norfolk, 
and others were so weak that the cats sprang upon 
them and caught them as they flew near the ground. 
A pair of these birds, which had completed a nest 
