CXCVl 
LIFE OF WILSON. 
den, rapidly reiterated zigzag excursions, and then attempt, by the 
powers of mathematics, to calculate the length of the various lines 
it describes; alas! even his omnipotent fluxions would avail him 
little here, and he would soon abandon the task in despair. Yet, 
that some conception may be formed of this extent, let us suppose 
that this little bird flies, in his usual way, at the rate of one mile 
in a minute, which, from the many experiments that I have made, 
I believe to be within the truth ; and that he is so engaged for ten 
hours every day; and further, that this active life is extended to 
ten years (many of our small birds being known to live much long- 
er even in a state of domestication), the amount of all these, allow- 
ing three hundred and sixty-five days to a year, would give us two 
millions one hundred and ninety thousand miles : upwards of eigh- 
ty-seven times the circumference of the globe ! Yet this winged 
seraphy if I may so speak, who, in a few days, and at will, can pass 
from the borders of the arctic regions to the torrid zone, is forced, 
when winter approaches, to descend to the bottoms of lakes, rivers, 
and millponds, to bury itself in the mud with eels and snapping 
turtles ; or to creep ingloriously into a cavern, a rat hole, or a hol- 
low tree, there to doze with snakes, toads, and other reptiles, until 
the return of spring! Is not this true ye xvise men of Europe and 
America, who have published so many credible narratives upon this 
subject ? The Geese, the Ducks, the Catbird, and even the Wren, 
which creeps about our outhouses in summer like a mouse, are all 
acknowledged to be migratory, and to pass into southern regions 
at the approach of winter; — the Swallow alone, on whom heaven 
has conferred superior powers of wing, must sink into torpidity at 
the bottom of our rivers, or doze all winter in the caverns of the 
earth. I am myself something of a traveller, and foreign coun- 
tries afford many novel sights : should I assert, that in some of my 
peregrinations I had met with a nation of Indians, all of whom, 
old and young, at the commencement of cold weather, descend to 
the bottom of their lakes and rivers, and there remain until the 
