The faculties of birds / [Anon].

  • Rennie, James, 1787-1867
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The faculties of birds / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    308/390 (page 260)
    a short time only, but their feet soon after became swelled and inflamed, which Mr. Pearson attributed to their perching, and they died about Christmas; thus the first year’s experiment was in some measure lost. Not discouraged by the failure of this, Mr. Pearson determined to make a second trial the sue- ceeding year, from a strong desire of being con- vinced of the truth respecting theirgoing into a state of torpidity. Accordingly, the next season, having taken some birds, he put them into the cage, and in every respect pursued the same method as with the last ; but to guard their feet from the bad effects of the damp and cold, he covered the perches with flannel, and had the pleasure to observe that the birds throve extremely well; they sung their song through the winter, and soon after Christmas began to moult, which they got through without any difficulty, and lived three or four years, regularly moulting every year at the usual time. On the renewal of their feathers, it appeared that their tails were forked exactly the same as in those birds which return hither in the spring, and in every respect their appearance was the same*.” The story of bank-swallows |having been drawn from their holes on the Rhine, it may be observed, is dated in April, which is about the usual time of the appearance of those birds, and is no more ex- traordinary than it would be to find a sparrow under a house-eave, or a tom-tit in the hole ofa tree. Did the bank-swallows really remain torpid in those holes during the winter, nothing would be easier than to find them there,—a circumstance which we believe has never been recorded even in the annals of credu- lity. In a numerous colony of this species, esta- blished in the bank of a stone-quarry at Catrine, in Ayrshire, we have in numerous instances witnessed * British Birds, i, 328,