1<[ AT VRAL til ST ORY o£ NO RW^ K 



the Winter fometimes, by accident, fall upon whole flocks of 

 Swallows in this ilate, and bring them up by (bores, and even 

 hy hundreds together : they find them coupled two and two 

 together, with their legs entangled, and bills fluck in one ano- 

 ther ; and they appear all together like a flrange mafs. If they 

 are brought into a warm room they will begin to move in 

 half an hour, and in a little while will flutter, and fly about ; 

 yet this untimely and unnatural reviving does not lafl longer than 

 an hour at mofl, and then they entirely die. In Olaus Magnus's 

 time this experiment was well known in this country, and is 



M 



•# 



deferibed in his Hiflor. Septentr. lib. xix* cap. 1 1 



The Svane, the Swart, is a flranger in this climate, and is properly Svane, 

 no Norvegian Bird, and therefore never feen in the eafh coun- 

 try, where the rivers are always frozen up in the Winter; but on 

 the weflern fide, where I (Part i. chap, i.) have obferved that the 

 Winters are much milder than in Denmark, or many parts of Ger- 

 many ; and where the fea is always open and unfrozen, there 

 are Swans, particularly in Sundfiord, near Svane Gaard, and 

 thereabouts, tho' not in any great number ; for they are but the 

 offspring of fome few llragglers, which the fevere Winters of 

 1709 and 174° in particular, drove hither to feek for open 

 waters ; at which time the cold was fo fevere, that even in 

 France the centinels died on their polls, the vines were kill' d by 

 the froft, and the Birds dropt down deacf out of the air ; the 

 whole Eail Sea was at that time frozen over; fo that people travell'd 

 from Copenhagen to Dantzick upon the ice, as fecure as if they tra- 

 vell'd on land ; but all the fait waters in this country were, at that 

 time, open ; and alfo at Bergens-Vaag God's wonderful providence 

 brought us at that time many Water-fowls, before unknown to us, 

 and amongft them Swans. This mufl appear wonderful to a philo^ 

 fopher, who would certainly never be perfuaded to look for fluid 

 water in the North, when it was frozen in the South f. 



Sondenwinds-Fugl, the South-wind Bird, fo called becaufe it sondenwinds- 

 is never feen but when the South- wind begins to blow, as the fugL 

 before-mentioned Nord winds Pibe prognoflicates the North-wind j 

 fo that thefe two fpecies of Birds ferve here as a living Weather- 

 glafs, forming their prognoflications not from deep confidera- 

 tion and conclufions, but from the greater or lefler preflbre 



; * Neverthelefs this inconteftible truth has been lately, and without the leaft founda- 

 tion, contradicted by George Edwards, in his Natural Hiftory of Birds, See Biblioth. 

 Britannique, Tom. xxiii. P. i. p. 2 12. 



N -f In Dr. Nic. Horrebow's Account of Iceland, juft publimed, we read with furprize 

 that Swans are found there in great numbers in the Summer, in frelH water; and in 

 the Winter in the open fea. §. 44. 



of 



