Birds. 4559 



at a great height above it for some time, then clown came a hundred or two into the 

 middle of the willows, like a shower of large black soot-flakes, the main flock 

 continuing to circle round and round until it came immediately over the bed, when 

 down came another shower of them, and so on, until the whole had descended. The 

 noise which they made was precisely like that of a steam-engine when blowing off the 

 steam ; it could readily be heard at the distance of a quarter of a mile. Upon 

 creeping cautiously up the plantation I found every twig, every leaf, bush and bit of 

 herbage alive with birds, for they were shuffling about in order to settle down com- 

 fortably ; ten or twelve would occupy one small branch scarcely two feet long. The 

 stench arising from their droppings was very disagreeable, and the ground, strewn as 

 it was with them, reminded one of some guano deposit upon the shores of the Pacific. 

 To see them day by day set out in different directions, each to his appointed work — 

 to watch them gradually congregating night by night at the same hour, and move off 

 to roost almost to a minute — to witness the harmony which seemed to reign amongst 

 them, their unanimity of purpose, and the completeness with which they acted, as it 

 were, upon one organised plan, was extremely interesting, and reminded one more of 

 an army of peaceful human beings gathered together upon some high occasion than 

 a congregation of simple and diminutive birds. They came every evening to roost in 

 the manner described until the 17th of September, when they departed, leaving only a 

 few hundreds, which remained until the middle of October. I have seen the usual 

 autumnal congregations, but never saw one upon the same immense scale before. 

 How came they to congregate in a locality which they never had visited before in such 

 numbers, and five or six weeks before they usually assemble in the autumn ? In the 

 * Illustrated London News,' of November 8, I read the following remarks of the Paris 

 correspondent, who, writing of the cholera, which had been raging fearfully in that 

 city, said, " A singular fact has been observed, viz., that the swallows, which had 

 entirely deserted Paris during the time that the epidemic raged, are beginning to 

 return. To prove how much the existence of this malady influences the feathered 

 tribes, we may state that, in the month of June, 1849, when the cholera was at its 

 height in Paris, a flight of swallows passing over Paris, which they had pre- 

 viously deserted, a large number fell dead, and were picked up in. the streets 

 or floated down the river." During the period when the swallows assembled 

 here in the multitudes which I have described, the cholera was raging fearfully 

 in London and other large cities and towns. Is it probable that they had 

 deserted localities where this disease was rife? Were they noticed to leave the 

 suburbs of London during the prevalence of it ? Large congregations, I know, occa- 

 sionally are found in the autumn roosting upon willows upon the banks of the Thames 

 and some other rivers. Are they ever found in immense congregations so early as the 

 14th of August? With us they do not flock much together until the latter end of 

 September or beginning of October, departing, on an average, about October 20th. — 

 John Joseph Briggs ; Kings Newton, Swarkeston, Derbyshire, November 14, 1854. 



A White Swalloiv obtained in East Kent. — I have received information that, 

 towards the end of October, a white swallow was killed in the neighbourhood of Sand- 

 wich, having been observed and pursued by several persons. " The head, neck and 

 upper part of the back were a delicate silvery light brown, shading off in the under 

 parts, tail and wings, to a not very pure white ;" and the bird is stated to have " looked 

 brilliant in the sunshine." The gentleman who shot it has sent it to Mr. Leadbitler, 

 in London, for preservation.— Arthur Hussey ; Rottingdean, November 10, 1854. 



