mergansers and golden-eyes in his March journals.
We were admiring this couple (a couple only in the looser sense of the word, for both birds were drakes), when all at once some small far-away object "swam into my ken." "A swallow!" said I, and even as I spoke a second one came into the field of the glass. Yes, there they were, two white-breasted swallows, sailing about over the meadows on the 23d of March. How unspeakably beautiful they looked, their lustrous blue-green backs with the bright sun shining on them! The date must constitute a "record," I assured my companion. Once before, at least, I had seen swallows in March, but that, I felt certain, was on one of the last days of the month. Strange that such creatures should have ventured so far northward thus early. If Gilbert White could see them, he would be more firmly convinced than ever that swallows "lay themselves up in holes and caverns, and do, insect-like and bat-like, come forth at mild times, and then retire again to their latebræ." For my own part, not being able to accept this doctrine, I con-
