Ixiv 
INTRODUCTION. 
an early period ot the spring, after their return, they have been observed to 
disappear in cold weather for several days together. Perhaps, the birds 
which fled from their usual haunts during the intemperate state of the 
atmosphere, which naturally drove their insect food to their retreats, might 
ture, or doomed to seek in our cold climate a winter’s retreat.) Candour is the soul of truth ; 
and although I totally disbelieve the assertion of the torpidity of the whole race, it would be 
uncandid in the extreme had I not related such circumstances as have come to my knowledge, 
which confirm the opinion that a few birds of this genus remain behind. In the month of May, 
in the year 1801, the thermometer at Teignmouth, in Devonshire, stood at thirty-eight, and the 
Swallows were so affected with the cold, that they could with difficulty fly ; their flight was weak 
and debilitated ; the boys pursued them with sticks, some of them were in this manner destroyed, 
and multitudes of them retired into crevices of walls to shelter themselves from the frigidity of 
the air. In the tower of the church of that town, some years before, a person of my acquaintance 
found, in spring, many Swallows closely locked together like a cluster of Bees, apparently insen- 
sible ; he took them home, exposed them to the sun in a warm room, and shortly after they reco- 
vered their strength and flew away. A mason, whom I believe to be a man of undoubted veracity, 
assured me, that he had discovered Martins at different times In the tower of the chapel of Teign- 
race, (Devon) in the winter season ; he believed that they were lifeless, but he used no endeavours 
to recover them. James Terapler, Esq. of Stover Lodge, in the same parish, assured me, that, 
when a boy, he found, in the winter season, several Sand-martins in a torpid state, clung to a 
branch of a tree, which had been recently taken from a ditch ; these birds recovered by being- 
placed in a warm situation. In May, 1807, several Swifts were taken up that had fallen to the 
ground, chilled by the cold atmosphere; many of them recovered by being exposed to a warmer 
air. And I have been assured by Danes and Norwegians, that a few Swallows and Martins remain 
in their countries secreted in holes of walls and trees ; but that the multitude quits them at the end 
of summer. Aristotle asserts, that the Swallows, even in Greece, commonly passed into warmer 
climates at the approach of winter, though many of them lay torpid in sheltered situations ; and 
he also avers, that they have been thus found stripped of their plumage. Pliny gives a similar 
account, and he enlists among migratory birds the Blackbird and the Thrush : “ hi plumam non 
amittunt, nec occultantur and he adds, from his own observation, saepe visi, quo hybernum 
pabulum petunt.” Even modern naturalists countenance the opinion of the torpidity of the whole of 
the Swallow tribe ; but in the vast series of years that have rolled away since the time of Aristotle, 
but few instances of the discovery of torpid Swallows in their hybernacula have been adduced : 
Vel qualis gelidis, pluma labente, pruinis; 
Arboris immoritur trunco brumalis hirundo. 
