The migrations of animals--especially those of the feathered tribe--constitute one of the most interesting and improving studies that the admirer of nature can pursue. When naturalists were less conversant with the movements of birds of passage, and knew little of their habits and haunts, it used to be a favorite mode of accounting for the regular disappearance of many species by attributing to them what is the case with certain animals, namely, a torpid condition during winter. It was affirmed that certain birds spent the cold months at the bottom of lakes, and gravely asserted by an authority of the last century that "swallows sometimes assemble in numbers, clinging to a reed till it breaks and sinks with them to the bottom; that their immersion is preceded by a song or dirge, which lasts more than a quarter of an hour; that sometimes they lay hold of a straw with their bills, and plunge down in society; and that others form a large mass by clinging together by the feet, and in this manner commit themselves to the deep." Irrespective of the ridiculous absurdity of such assertions, and their want of corroborative evidence, we have the recorded opinions of John Hunter and Professor Owen as to the incompatibility of a bird's organism for such a mode of existence. In all probability, the statement may have in part arisen from the well-known circumstance that many birds of passage tarry in their summer retreats until caught by the cold of winter, when individuals may be found benumbed and senseless; {58} this is a common occurrence, even with the swallows and other birds of northern India, where in the cold months the temperature during night falls often to freezing, whilst at midday it may range as high as 80° Fahr. in the shade. I have also seen the green bee-eater and small warblers so mach affected by a temperature of 40° on the banks of the Nile in Nubia as to be scarcely able to fly from twig to twig. The effects of severe winters on many of our indigenous as well as migratory birds have been frequently exemplified by the numbers found dead in sheltered situations, and especially if the cold sets in early, when comparatively few birds of passage escape; for instance, the corn-crake has been found in Britain during the winter months; we know of one individual that was picked up on Christmas-day, crouching among furze bushes, almost insensible from cold. The winter homes of European birds of passage comprehend southern Europe, lower Egypt, and the countries that lie between the desert and southern shores of the Mediterranean, including the elevated lands of Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, which, although differing in physical features and, in some respects, in climate, are, strictly speaking, but an extension of Europe, for their flora and fauna are European. It is only when the traveller crosses the Sahara, with its salt lakes and moving clouds of sand, and gains the region of verdure beyond, that he enters on a new