LIFE OF WILSON. 
cxciii 
found in a torpid state, is unquestionably true. Mr. Collinson 
gives the evidence of three gentlemen who were eye-witnesses 
to a number of sand-martins being drawn out of a cliff on the 
Rhine, in the month of March, 1762.”* One should suppose 
that Smellie was too good a logician to infer that, because swal- 
lows had been found in the state described, they had remained 
in that state all winter. A little more knowledge of the sub- 
ject would have taught the three gentlemen observers, that the 
poor swallows had been driven to their retreat by cold weather, 
which had surprised them in their vernal migration; and that 
this state of numbness, falsely called torpidity, if continued 
for a few days, would for ever have destroyed them. 
It is now time to resume the subject of Wilson’s Ornitholo- 
gy, as the reader will, probably, consider that we have trans- 
gressed the limits which our digression required. 
Dr. Drake, in his observations upon the descriptive abilities 
of the poet Bloomfield, thus expresses himself: “ Milton and 
Thomson have both introduced the flight of the sky-lark, the 
first with his accustomed spirit and sublimity; but proba- 
bly no poet has surpassed, either in fancy or expression, the 
following prose narrative of Dr. Goldsmith. “ Nothing,” ob- 
serves he, “ can be more pleasing than to see the Lark warbling 
upon the wing; raising its note as it soars, until it seems lost 
in the immense heights above us; the note continuing, the bird 
itself unseen; to see it then descending with a swell as it comes 
from the clouds, yet sinking by degrees as it approaches its 
nest; the spot where all its affections are centred; the spot 
that has prompted all this joy.” This description of the de- 
scent of the bird, and of the pleasures of its little nest, is con- 
ceived in a strain of the most exquisite delicacy and feeling.”! 
I am not disposed to dispute the beauty of the imagery of the 
above, or the delicacy of its expression; but I should wish the 
reader to compare it with Wilson’s description of the Mocking- 
* Philosophy of Natural History, chap. 20. 
t Drake’s Literary Horn's, No. 39, Edition of 1820. 
VOL. I. — B b 
