cxxiv 
LIFE OF WILSON. 
met with a nation of Indians, all of whom, okl and young, at the commence- 
ment of cohl weather, descend to the bottom of their lakes and rivers, and 
there remain until the breaking up of frost; nay, should I affirm, that thou- 
sands of people in the neighborhood 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 the Schujdkill, where they had lain torpid all winter, car- 
ried 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 organization of a 
swallow less delicate than that of a man ? Can a bird, whose vital functions 
are destroyed by a short privation 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 ?f Away with such absurdities! they are unwortliy 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 them, aud 
marked their peculiarities more than I have done ; yet the mii-aclc of a resus- 
citated 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." 
The subject of the supposed torpidity of swallows has employed many writ- 
ers, but unfortunately too few of those, whose practical knowledge enabled 
them to speak Avith that certainty, which should always give authority to writ- 
ings ou natural history. Keasoning a j^riori ought to have taught mankind a 
* Here tliere is a palpable allusion to a paper on the hybernation of swallows, which 
was published in the sixth volume of the Transactions of the American Philosophical 
Society. This paper was written by one Frederick Antes, and was communicated to the 
Society by the late Professor Barton. It is probable that Wilson had also read the 
" letter on the retreat of house-swallows in winter, from the Honorable Samuel Dexter, 
Esq., to the Honorable James Bowdoin, Esq. ;" and that "from the Reverend Mr. Pack- 
ard to the Honorable Samuel Dexter, Esq.," both of them published in the Memoirs of 
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of Boston, vols. 1 and 2. 
Such communications are not calculated to do honor to any learned institution ; and 
they ought to be rejected with scorn and reprehension. 
f Carlisle, in his lecture on muscular motion, oI>serves, that, " animals of the class 
Mammalia, which h^'bernate and become torpid in the winter, have at all times a power 
of subsisting under a confined respiration, which would destroy other animals not having 
this peculiar habit. In all the hybernating Mammalia there is a peculiar structure of the 
heart and its principal veins." Philosophical Transactions for 1805, p. 17. 
"If all birds, except swallows," says Reeve, " are able to survive the winter, and they 
alone are so overcome by the cold as to be rendered torpid, the difference must be found 
in their anatomical structure, and in their habits of life. 
"Now, in the first place, it is certain that they have, in common v^'ith other birds, the 
three great functions of respiration, circulation, and assimilation : the similarity of their 
organs, and every circumstance in their mode of living, prove that they are subject to the 
same laws : they have also a very high temperature ; and are peculiarly organized for 
rapid and long flight. Tlie size of their lungs, the lightness of their bones, and the 
buoyancy of their feathers, render it absolutely impossible to sink them in water without 
a considerable weight ; and they die instantly for want of air." Reeve ou Torpidity, 
p. 43. 
