s which crossed and
supported the thatched roof. Upon mounting a ladder, he found to his
astonishment that this was a group of Chimney-swallows (_Hirundo
rustica_) which had taken up their winter quarters in this exposed
situation. The group consisted of five, completely torpid: and none of
the tribe to which they belonged had been seen for five or six weeks
previously: he took them in his hand, as they lay closely and coldly
huddled together, and conveyed them to his house, in order to exhibit
them as objects of curiosity to the other members of his family. For
some time they remained to all appearance lifeless; but the temperature
of the apartment into which they were carried being considerably raised
by a good turf fire, they gradually evinced symptoms of reanimation; and
in less than a quarter of an hour, finding that they were rather rudely
handled, all of them recovered, so as to fly impatiently round the room,
in search of some opening by which they might escape. The window was
thrown up, and they soon found their way into the fields, and were never
seen again. A similar circumstance, though, from the place of its
discovery it must refer probably to Sand Martins, was related by a
gentleman who found two Swallows in a sand-bank at Newton, near
Stirling, quite dormant.

"Again, about half-a-dozen Swallows were found a few years ago, in a
torpid state, in the trunk of a hollow tree, by a countryman, who
brought them to a respectable person, by whom they were deposited in a
desk, where they remained forgotten till the following spring, when, one
morning, on hearing a noise, he opened the desk, and found one of them
fluttering about: the others also began to shew signs of life, and upon
being placed out of doors in the sun, speedily arranged their plumage,
took wing, and disappeared.

"On the 2d of November 1829, at Loch Ransa, in the island of Arran, a
man, while digging in a place where a pond had been lately drained off,
discovered two Swallows in a state of torpor; on placing them near the
fire, they recovered. One unfortunately escaped, but the other was kept
by the man, for the purpose of shewing it to some scientific persons."

In North America there is a curious species of Swift, (_Acanthylis
pelasgia_,) which associates in immense flocks to roost in chimneys and
hollow trees. It is the popular belief that these birds spend the winter
in a torpid condition in their roosting trees. Williams, in his "History