NORTH AMERICA* 
2$t 
be productive of any real benefit to mankind,, and 
pronounce fuch attention to natural hidory merely 
fpeculative, and only fit to amufe and entertain the 
idle virtuofo ; however the ancients thought other- 
wife : for, with them, the knowledge of the paflage 
of birds was the ftudy of their priefts and philofo- 
phers, and was confldered a matter of real and in- 
difpenfible ufe to the ftate, next to adronomy 5 as 
we find their fyftem and practice of agriculture was 
in a great degree regulated by the arrival and dis- 
appearance of birds of paflage ; and perhaps a ca- 
lendar under fuch a regulation at this time, might 
be ufeful to the hufbandman and gardener. 
But however attentive and obfervant the an- 
cients were on this branch of fcience, they feem to 
have been very ignorant or erroneous in their con- 
jectures concerning what became of birds, after 
their difappearance, until their return again. In 
the Southern and temperate climates fome imagin- 
ed they went to the moon : in the northern regions 
they fuppofed that they retired to caves and hollow- 
trees, for flicker and fecurity, where they remained 
in a dormant date during the cold feafons : and 
even at this day, very celebrated men have aliened 
that fwailows (hirundo) at the approach of winter, 
voluntarily plunge into lakes and rivers, defend 
to the bottom, and there creep into the mud and 
flime, where they continue overwhelmed by ice in 
a torpid date, until the returning dimmer warms 
them again into life ; when they rife, return to the 
furface of the water, immediately take wing, and 
again people the air. This notion, though the lated, 
feems the mod difficult to reconcile to reafon and 
common fenfe, refpeCting a bird fo fwift of flight 
that it can with eafe and pleafure move through the 
air 
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