began to congregate, forsaking the chimnies and houses, they
roosted every night in the osier-beds of the sits of that river. Now
this resorting towards that element, at that season of the year,
seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as
it is) of their retiring under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much
persuaded of that fact, that he talks, in his calendar of Flora, as
familiarly of the swallows going under water in the beginning of
September, as he would of his poultry going to roost a little before
sunset.

An observing gentleman in London writes me word that he saw a
house-martin, on the twenty-third of last October, flying in and out
of its nest in the Borough. And I myself, on the twenty-ninth of last
October (as I was travelling through Oxford), saw four or five
swallows hovering round and settling on the roof of the county-
hospital.

Now is it likely that these poor little birds (which perhaps had not
been hatched but a few weeks) should, at that late season of the
year, and from so midland a county, attempt a voyage to Goree or
Senegal, almost as far as the equator? *
(* See Adamson's Voyage to Senegal.)

I acquiesce entirely in your opinion--that, though most of the
swallow kind may migrate, yet that some do stay behind and hide
with us during the winter.

As to the short-winged soft-billed birds, which come trooping in
such numbers in the spring, I am at a loss even what to suspect
about them. I watched them narrowly this year, and saw them