BARN SWALLOW. 89 
swallows are come,” what a train of charming 1 ideas 
are associated with the simple tidings ! 
The wonderful activity displayed by these birds forms 
a striking contrast to the slow habits of most other 
animals. It may be fairly questioned, whether, among 
the whole feathered tribes which heaven has formed to 
adorn this part of creation, there be any that, in the 
same space of time, pass over an equal extent of surface 
with the swallow. Let a person take his stand on a 
fine summer evening by a new mown field, meadow, or 
river shore, for a short time, and among the numerous 
individuals of this tribe that flit before him, fix his 
eye on a particular one, and follow, for a while, all 
its circuitous labyrinths — its extensive sweeps — its 
sudden, rapidly reiterated zig-zag excursions, little 
inferior to the lightning itself, and then attempt, by 
the powers of mathematics, to calculate the length of 
the various lines it describes. Alas ! even his omni- 
potent fluxions would avail him little here, and he 
would soon abandon the task in despair. Yet, that 
some definite conception may be formed of this extent, 
let us suppose, that this little bird flies, in his usual 
way, at the rate of one mile in a minute, which, from 
the many experiments I have made, I believe to he 
within the truth; and that he is so engaged for ten 
hours every day ; and further, that this active life is 
extended to ten years, (many of our small birds being 
known to live much longer, even in a state of domesti- 
cation), the amount of all these, allowing three hundred 
and sixty-five days to a year, would give us two million 
one hundred and ninety thousand miles ; upwards of 
eighty-seven times the circumference of the globe ! 
Yet this little winged seraph, if I may so speak, who, 
in a few days, and at will, can pass from the borders of 
the arctic regions to the torrid zone, is forced, when 
winter approaches, to descend to the bottoms of lakes, 
rivers, and mill-ponds, to bury itself in the mud with 
eels and snapping turtles ; or to creep ingloriously into 
a cavern, a rat-hole, or a hollow tree, there to doze, 
with snakes, toads, and other reptiles, until the return 
