LIFE OF WILSON. 
cxcv 
with vines. But I can truly declare that I could never read it in 
an audible voice, the intenseness of my feelings always overpower- 
ing me. 
He thus delightfully introduces his history of the Barn Swallow : 
“ There are but few persons in the United States unacquainted 
with this gay, innocent, and active little bird. Indeed the whole 
tribe are so distinguished from the rest of small birds by their 
sweeping rapidity of flight, their peculiar aerial evolutions of wing 
over our fields and rivers, and through our very streets, from 
morning to night, that the light of heaven itself, the sky, the trees, 
or any other common objects of nature, are not better known than 
the swallows. We welcome their first appearance with delight, as 
the faithful harbingers and companions of flowery spring, and rud- 
dy summer ; and when, after a long, frost-bound and boisterous 
winter, we hear it announced that the “ Sivallows are come !” what a 
train of charming ideas are associated with the simple tidings I” 
The following remarks on the current doctrine of the hyber- 
nation of Swallows are worthy of note. My object in introducing 
them into this place is twofold ; to exemplify our author’s talent 
for copious and equable composition, and to afford myself an op- 
portunity of adding my feeble testimony to his on a subject which 
one should suppose would have been long ago definitively ascer- 
tained. 
“ The wonderful activity displayed by these birds forms a 
striking contrast to the slow habits of most other animals. It may 
be fairly questioned whether among the whole feathered tribes, 
which heaven has formed to adorn this part of creation, there be 
any that, in the same space of time, pass over an equal extent of 
surface with the Swallow. Let a person take his stand on a fine 
summer evening, by a new-mown field, meadow or river shore, 
for a short time, and among the numerous individuals of this tribe 
that flit before him fix his eye on a particular one, and follow, for 
a while, all its circuitous labyrinths — its extensive sweeps — its siul- 
