THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
5
in the second volume of the "Harleian Miscellany," and in a separate
pamphlet, that migrant birds "go unto and remain in some one of the
celestial bodies, and that must be the moon, which is most likely,
because nearest and bearing most relation to this our earth, as
appears in the Copernican scheme ; yet is the distance great enough
to denominate the passage thither an itineration or journey." Our
author allows the distance to be undoubtedly formidable. So had
thought others. Mr. R. Johnson, writing to Ray from Brignall
(Teesdale, Yorks.), under date May 7th, 1686, says, "and now 'tis
in my thoughts, I would intreat you, at your best leisure, to let me
know if you can tell anything certain concerning the birds of passage,
whither they go when they leave us ? If it be granted that the
Swallow kind, and such small birds, do hide themselves in rocks or
trees, yet Storks, Soland Geese, and birds of great size, cannot pos-
sibly do so. The moon is too far a journey, and a New World in the
South Temperate Zone methinks they can hardly reach, seeing Wild
Geese from Ireland and Woodcocks from Norway come often so
tired to us."6 Another theory, and one still more reasonably and
more firmly rooted in the scientific minds of days gone by was
hybernation, either in trees, caves, or holes in the ground, or more
absurdly, perhaps, under water, at the bottom of ponds or rivers.
From Aristotle and Pliny, down to Gilbert White's famous ninth
letter to Daines Barrington (12 Feb., 1771) all sorts of conjectures
on this subject are made, and most circumstantial accounts of
hibernating birds (mostly Swallows) being discovered, are given by
Olaus Magnus (Archbishop of Upsal), Etmuller, Derham, Klein,
Pennant, and in several communications to the "Philosophical
Transactions."
Linnaeus speaks of Swallows going under water as an accepted
fact. Gilbert White wrote, "You are, I know, no great friend to
migration ; and the well-attested accounts from various parts of the
kingdom seem to justify you in your suspicions, that at least many
of the Swallow kind do not leave us in the winter but lay themselves
up like insects and bats, in a torpid state, to slumber away the more
uncomfortable months till the return of the sun and fine weather
awakens them. But then we must not, I think, deny migration in
general, because migration certainly does subsist in some places, as
my brother in Andalusia has fully informed me."7 Two years pre-
6 Ray's Letters, ed. Derham (1718) p. 198, ed. Lankester (Ray Soc, 1848) p. 183.
7 Bell's ed. of White's "Selborne," vol. i., p. 135.