LIFE OF WILSON. 
cci 
proach of winter, but remain in the island, and issue from their re- 
treat on warm days in quest of food.”* 
The late professor Barton of Philadelphia, in a letter to the 
editor of the Philosophical Magazine, thus comments upon the first 
paragraph of the above remarks of Dr. Reeve. It appears some- 
what surprising to me, that an author who had so long had the 
subject of the torpidity of animals under his consideration, should 
have hazarded the assertion contained in the preceding paragraph. 
Dr. Reeve has certainly read of other birds besides the Swallow, 
the Cuckoo, and the Woodcock, which are said to have been found 
in a torpid state. And ought he not to have mentioned these 
birds ? 
“ In my Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania,” 
I have mentioned the common Humming-bird {Trochilus colubris) 
as one of those American birds which do occasionally become 
torpid. 
In regard to the Swallows, I shall say but little at present. 
I have, at this time, in the press, a memoir on the migration and 
torpidity of these birds. I am confident that I shall be able to con- 
vince every candid philosopher^ that great numbers of Swalloivs, of 
different species, do occasionally pass into a state of torpidity, more or 
less profound, not merely “in some remote quarter of America,” 
but in the vicinity of our capital cities, where there are some men 
of genuine observation and inquiry, and who are as little propense 
to believe the marvellous in natural history, as any philosophers 
elsewhere. 
* An Essay on the Torpidity of Animals, by Henry Reeve, M. D. p. 40, 
The author of this narrative, in the middle of December, 1820, was at Nice, on the Medi- 
terranean; and had the gratification of beholding the common European Swallow (//zrundo 
rustica) flying through the streets in considerable numbers. M. Risso, a well-known naturalist, 
and a resident of the place, informed him that Swallows remained there all winter. 
On the 20th February, 1818, being at the mouth of the river St. John, in East Florida, 
I observed several Swallows of the species viridis of Wilson; and, on the 26th, a flight o£^ 
them, consisting of several hundreds, coming from the sea. They are the first which reach us 
in the spring from the south. They commonly arrive in Pennsylvania in the early part of March. 
3 E 
VOL. IX. 
