NATURAL HISTORY of NO RW A Y. 99 



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

 Swallows in this ftate, and bring thern up by fcores, and even 

 by hundreds together ; they find them coupled two and two 

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

 ther ; and they appear all together like a ftrange 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 lail longer than 

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

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

 defcribed in his Hiftor. Septentr. lib. xix* cap. n*. 



The Svane, the Swan, is a ftranger in this climate, and is properly Svane, 

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

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

 the weftern 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 (hagglers, which the fevere Winters of 

 1709 and 1740 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 ports, j&e vines were kill'd by 

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

 whole Eaft Sea was at that lime frozen dver; fo that people travell'd 

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

 velled 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 amongfl them Swans. This muft appear wonderful to a phild- 

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

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

 4 Sondenwinds-Fugl, the South-wind Bird, fo called becaufe it sond^O, 

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

 before-mentioned Nord winds Pibe prognofticates the North-wind • 

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

 glafs, forming their prognoftications not from deep confidera- 

 tion and conclufioiw, but from the greater or lefTer preffure 



*NeverthelelTs this inconteftible truth has been lately, and without the lead founda- 



^^^^fd^ ^^NaturJlHiilory of Birds. SeeBiblioth. 



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



&&&» ^^:r% numbers in the Summer ' * ** *:• Jd S 



of 



