obliged by their stating their opinions in the _Zoologist_: meanwhile I hold to my belief, that the Bat had been there for not less than _one hundred and six years_!"[112] [97] Bell's _Brit. Rept._ (1839), 112. [98] _Zoologist_, 614. [99] _Zool._, 1879. [100] _Zool._, 3632. [101] _Zool._, 3808. [102] _Zool._, 3848. [103] _Zool._, 3904. [104] _Zool._, 5959. [105] _Zool._, 6537. [106] _Ibid._, 6565. [107] Richardson's _Borderer's Table Book_, iii. 92. [108] _Zool._, 3266. [109] _Zool._, 6941. [110] _Zool._, 613. [111] See page 183, _ante_. [112] _Zool._, 4245. V. HYBERNATION OF SWALLOWS. What becomes of our swallows in the winter? They migrate, you reply, to a warmer parallel. That is true, no doubt; though there have not been wanting naturalists of respectable name who have maintained that none of them ever leave the country. No doubt, however, they do migrate; but is this true of the entire body, or only of a portion? That the whole hirundinal population--swifts, swallows, martins, and bank-martins--disappear from view, every one knows; for who ever saw any of the tribe wheeling and traversing through the sky in the frosts of January or February? But so do the Bats and the Butterflies. Now, the Bats hybernate with us, concealing themselves in crevices, caves, hollow trees, unused buildings, and similar places; so do the house-flies; so do the butterflies, some species at least, and many other insects. Do the Swallows hybernate? That they do is a very old opinion; and those homely but wide-spread rhymes that record so many accepted facts in popular natural history, record _this_ as a fact. Our rustic children sing-- "The bat, the bee, the butterfly, The cuckoo and the swallow, The corn-crake and the wheat-ear, They all sleep in the hollow." Local variations--what we may call _lectiones variæ_--exist; for example, in the south-east of our island, the third line runs, "The corn-crake and the _nightingale_."