130 



BARN SWALLOW. 



other reptiles, until the return of spring! Is not this true, ye 

 wise men of Europe and America, who have published so many 

 credible narratives on this subject ? The geese, the ducks, 

 the cat bird, and even the wren, which creeps about our out- 

 houses 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 pere- 

 grinations 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 thousands of 

 people, in the neighbourhood 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 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 organisation of a swallow less delicate than that of a man ? 

 Can a bird, whose vital functions are destroyed by a short pri- 

 vation of pure air and its usual food, sustain, for six months, 

 a situation where the most robust man would perish in a few 

 hours or minutes? Away with such absurdities ! they are 

 unworthy of a serious refutation. 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, 



