Go, wand'rers, go, repair your sooty bowers,
Think, on no hostile roof my chimnies rise.
Again I'll listen to your grave debates,

I'll think I hear your various maxims told,
Your numbers, leaders, policies, and states,
Your limits settled, and your tribes enrolled.
I'll think I hear you tell of distant lands,

What insect-nations rise from Egypt's mud,
What painted swarms subsist on Libya's sands,
What mild Euphrates yields, and Ganges' flood.
Thrice happy race! whom Nature's call invites
To travel o'er her realms with active wing,
To taste her choicest stores, her best delights,
The summer's radiance, and the sweets of spring:
While we are doomed to bear the restless change
Of shifting seasons, vapours dank, or dry,
Forbid, like you, to milder climes to range,
When wintry clouds deform the troubled sky.

But know the period to your joys assigned!
Know ruin hovers o'er this earthly ball;
Certain as fate, and sudden as the wind,
Its secret adamantine props shall fall.

Yet when your short-lived summers shine no more,
My patient mind, sworn foe to vice's way,
Sustained on lighter wings than yours, shall soar
To fairer realms beneath a brighter ray:

To plain etherial, and Elysian bowers,

Where wintry storms no rude access obtain, Where blasts no lightning, and no thunder low'rs, But spring and joy unchanged for ever reign.

JAGO.

No. LXVI.

FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON THE MIGRA-. TION OF BIRDS.

Where do the cranes, or winding swallows, go?
Fearful of gathering winds and falling snow?
If into rocks, or hollow trees, they creep,
In temporary death confined to sleep;
Or, conscious of the coming evil, fly
To milder regions and a southern sky?

To the SWALLOW.

Gentle Herald of the Spring,
Gliding swift on wand'ring wing,
Say from what distant climes returned,
Thou view'st Britannia's realm again,
And, skimming o'er the primrose plain,
Pursu'st, in ecstasy, thine airy flight,
Oft gazing with increased delight

PRIOR.

On her fair fields, with softest verdure crowned,
While April spreads his chequered gems around ?

Com'st thou from Afric's sultry waste,

To shun her summer's scorching heat;
Where, fiercely gleaming o'er the blasted heath,
The dry Harmatton breathes the gale of death?

Or com'st thou from some secret cave,
Waked from thy long repose,
Where wint'ry winds around thee blew,

And fell the driving snows;

Where storms unheeded rent the troubled air,
While ev'ry field was bleak, and ev'ry tree was bare?

Or sunk beneath the whelming tide,
Could thy feathered form reside,
And, strange to tell! by secret charms,
While Naiads waved their circling arms,
In liquid crystal pass the wint'ry gloom,
Till earth again disgorged her vernal bloom?

DR. SHAW.

I INTIMATED, in my former paper, that the state of the swallow-tribes, when they are no longer seen in our regions, has given rise to a controverted question in natural history. The poets, as well as the philosophers, seem to be divided on the subject. Thus Anacreon, as paraphrased by Cowley, addresses the swallow:

In thy undiscovered nest

Thou dost all the winter rest,
And dreamest o'er thy summer joys,
Free from the stormy season's noise.

And Thomson, in noticing their disappearance in autumn, speaks with the same uncertainty on the subject, as do the poets in my motto:

When Autumn scatters his departing gleams,
Warned of approaching Winter, gathered, play
The swallow-people; and tossed wide around,
O'er the calm sky, in convolution swift,
The feathered eddy floats: rejoicing once,
Ere to their wintry slumbers they retire;
In clusters clung, beneath the mould'ring bank,
And where, unpierced by frost, the cavern sweats.
Or rather into warmer climes conveyed,

With other kindred birds of season, there
They twitter cheerful, till the vernal months
Invite them welcome back: for, thronging, now
Innumerous wings are in commotion all.

Naturalists, as I have before observed, are likewise much divided in their opinion concerning the periodical appearance and disappearance of swallows. Some assert, that they remove from climate to climate, at those particular seasons when winged insects, their natural food, fail in one country, and are plentiful in another, where they likewise find a temperature of air better suited to their constitution. In support of this opinion we have the testimony

of Sir Charles Wager, mentioned in my preceding paper, and of M. Adanson, who, in the account of his voyage, informs us, that, about fifty leagues from the coast of Senegal, four swallows settled upon the ship, on the sixth day of October; that these birds were taken; and that he knew them to be the true swallow of Europe, which he conjectures were then returning to the coast of Africa. But Mr. Daines Barrington, in a curious essay on this subject', has adduced many arguments and facts, to prove, that no birds, however strong and swift in their flight, can possibly fly over such large tracks of the ocean as has been commonly supposed. He is of opinion, therefore, that the swallows mentioned by M. Adanson, instead of being on their passage from Europe, were only fluttering from the Cape de Verde Islands to the continent of Africa; a much nearer flight, but to which they seemed to be unequal, as they were obliged, from fatigue, to alight upon the ship, and fall into the hands of the sailors. And Mr. Kalm, another advocate for the torpidity of swallows during the winter, having remarked, however, that he himself had met with them 920 miles from any land; Mr. Barrington endeavours to explain these, and similar facts, by supposing, that birds discovered in such situations, instead of attempting to cross large branches of the ocean, have been forcibly driven from some coast by storms, and that they would naturally perch upon the first vessel they could see.

In a word, Mr. Barrington is further of opinion, with some other naturalists, that the swallows do not leave this island at the end of autumn, but that they lie in a torpid state, till the beginning of summer, in the banks of rivers, the hollows of decayed trees, the recesses of old buildings, the holes of sand banks,

1 Phil. Trans. vol. Ixii. p. 265.

and in similar situations. Among other facts, Mr. Barrington communicated one to Mr. Pennant:

That numbers of swallows have been found in old dry walls, and in sand hills, near the seat of the late Lord Belhaven in East Lothian; not once only, but from year to year; and that, when they were exposed to the warmth of a fire, they revived.'

6

These, and other facts of the same kind, are allowed to be incontrovertible; and Mr. Pennant, in particular, infers from them, that we must divide our belief relative to these two so different opinions, and conclude, that one part of the swallow-tribe migrate, and that others have their winter quarters near home1.

But there are still more wonderful facts related. Mr. Kalm remarks, that swallows appear in the Jerseys about the beginning of April; that, on their first arrival they are wet, because they have just emerged from the sea or lakes, at the bottom of which they had remained in a torpid state during the whole winter. Other naturalists have asserted, that swallows pass the winter immersed under the ice, at the bottom of lakes, or beneath the waters of the sea. Olaus Magnus, archbishop of Upsal, seems to have been the first who adopted this opinion. He informs us, that swallows are found in great clusters at the bottoms of the northern lakes, with mouth to mouth, wing to wing, foot to foot, and that in autumn they creep down the reeds to their subaqueous retreats3. In other instances, Mr. Pennant remarks, the good archbishop did not want credulity. But the submersion of the swallows under water does not rest upon his testimony alone, Klein asserts the same; and gives the following ac

⚫ British Zoology, vol. ii. p. 250, 8vo edit.

2

Voyage, tome i. p. 24.

3 Derham's Physico Theol.