CXCVIU 
LIFE OF WILSON. 
pleased to meet with a man who has been personally more conver- 
sant with birds than myself, who has followed them in their wide 
and devious routes — studied their various manners — mingled with 
them, and marked their peculiarities more than I have done; yet 
the miracle of a resuscitated Swallow, in the depth of winter, from 
the bottom of a millpond, is, I confess, a phenomenon in orni- 
thology that I have never met with.” 
The subject of the supposed torpidity of swallow^s has employ- 
ed many writers, but unfortunately too few of those whose practical 
knowledge enabled them to speak with that certainty which should 
always give authority to writings on natural history. Reasoning 
a priori ought to have taught mankind a more rational opinion 
than that which the advocates of hybeimation have unthinking- 
ly promulgated. And is it not surprising that as experiments 
are so easy to be instituted, they should have been so seldom re- 
sorted to, in order to determine a problem which many may sup- 
pose to be intricate, but which, in effect, is one of the simplest, or 
most easy to be ascertained, of any in the whole animal kingdom? 
It is a fact that all the experiments which have been made, on the 
subject of the hybernation of birds, have failed to give countenance, 
in the most remote degree, to this irrational doctrine. 
From my personal experience, and from my earliest youth I 
have been conversant with the habits of birds, I feel myself justi- 
fied in asserting, that, in the whole class Jives, there has never 
been an authenticated instance known of a single individual capa- 
ble of entering into that peculiar state denominated torpidity. Be 
it observed that the narratives of credulous travellers and superfi- 
cial observers, and newspaper tales, on this subject, are of no au- 
thority, and must be utterly rejected. And yet these are the only 
sources whence naturalists have drawn their opinions on the ques- 
tion of torpidity. It is to be regretted that the authority of Lin- 
naeus himself should have given credit and currency to this opin- 
ion, and the more so since his example of sanctioning vulgar nar- 
