LIFE OF WILSON. 
cxcvn 
breaking up of frost; nay, should I affirm, that thousands of peo- 
ple in the neighbourhood of this city, regularly undergo the same 
semi-annual submersion — that I myself had fished up a whole fa- 
mily of these from the bottom of the Schuylkill, where they had 
lain torpid all winter, carried 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 Socie- 
ty,^ 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. Away with such ab- 
surdities! they are unworthy of a serious refutation. I should be 
* Here there 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 Honourable Samuel Dexter, Esq. to the Honourable 
James Bowdoin, Esq. and that “ from the Reverend Mr. Packard to the Honourable Samuel 
Dexter, Esq.,” both of them published in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and 
Sciences of Boston, vols. I and 2, 
Such communications are not calculated to do honour to any learned institution ; and they 
ought to be rejected with scorn and reprehension. 
f Carlisle, in his Lecture on Muscular Motion, observes, that “ animals of the class Mam- 
maliay which hybernate 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 bybernating 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 difierence 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 with 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. The 
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 instant- 
ly for want of air.” Reeve on Torpidity, p. 43. 
3 D 
VOL. IX. 
