Gl 
])ir(l.s liad pcrisliecl. I tlierofore attribute tlieir death rather to 
hunger than cold; since the absence of sun deprived them of 
their usual insect diet, and when thus enfeebled the cold had a far 
gl cater effect upon their vital jJowers. I examined several and in 
all cases found them only skin and bone, their breast-bones being 
painfully sharp, and showing plainly the amount of their iiriva- 
tions. Swallows and House Martins evidently suffered most, and 
Sand Martins in a somewhat less degree, being essentially a 
water-side species. Swifts were also picked up, but these birds, 
later breeders than the rest, I imagine must have betaken them- 
selves southward to avoid a like fate. 
On the 27th of May, a gentleman driving from Hridgliam to 
Marling, found the parapet of the bridge over the Thet lined with 
Swallows and Martins, which did not attempt to fly away. Some 
sat in the road and scarcely troubled themselves to stir as ho 
approached. On the morning of the 29th, INfr. Solly, a butcher, in 
passing over the same bridge, literally drove over a group or two of 
these poor birds, which he, of course, imagined would rise on his 
approach, but on descending from his cart found them too feeble to 
fly, and many of them dead. 'J'hey sat in clusters of four or five, 
with their heads inwards and huddled together for warmth. They 
had collected on the south side of the bridge, protected from the 
north and east by a small plantation, and of course whilst able to 
seek their food had frequented the water’s side. At 'West Harlin" 
j\fr. J. Ringer had several picked up dead in his paddock on the 
29th, and one in a chicken’s coop ; whilst for a day or two before 
his men observed them flying into the cattle sheds and stables for 
shelter whenever a door was left open, tamed to a most pitiable 
extent, by their want of food. From Yarmouth and Lynn the 
same accounts were received and at the same time, between the 
27th and 29th Mr. Cole, a bird-stuffer in Norwich, had upwrards 
of sixty birds, chiefly Swallows and Martins, with a few Swifts, 
brought in dead, or dying, by boys, for sale. One man brought in 
twenty, all picked up in the vicinity of this city. Mr. Crompton 
ascertained that at Haveringl.and as many as seventy were picked 
up dead under the cattle sheds, apparently almost all the birds of 
the Swallow tribe in that neighbourhood, and similar reports have 
appeared in our local journals from many other localities. 
In Suffolk, the same mortality was noticed, and Mr. T. E. 
