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theory that it passed the winter under the mud bottom of large ponds and rivers in a state of hibernation. The matter has even been treated seriously, in spite of its manifest absurdity, the construction of the bird's breathing-apparatus precluding such a possibility.

Bank Swallow: Clivicola riparia.

Sand Martin.

Plate 19. Fig. 2.

Length: 6 inches. The smallest of our Swallows.

Male and Female: Above dull mouse colour, wings and tail brownish, below white, with a brownish breast band. Bill and feet dark.

Song: A giggling twitter.

Season: Common summer resident, arriving in May.

Breeds: All through its North American range.

Nest: In tunnelled holes in clayey banks; made of grass and lined with a few feathers.

Eggs: 4-6, pure white.

Range: Northern Hemisphere; in America, south to the West Indies, Central America, and northern South America.

The Bank Swallow is the plainest, as well as the smallest, of the family. His back is the colour of the damp mottled gray sand with which he is closely associated, and he shows no glints of purple, steel-blue, and buff, like his brethren, but wears a dusky cloak fastened about his throat with a band of the same colour.

There is always a large colony of these Swallows near Southport, where Sasco Hill is eut off abruptly by the Sound. The bank is high, and shows a face of various grades of loam and some strata of gravel; below there is a bit of stony beach, bare at low tides, but in storms the water breaks half-way up the bank. A few feet above high-water mark vou can see the holes. in the bank which are the entrances to the Swallows' nests. They are not arranged with any sort of regularity, but the birds have chosen invariably the stiff loam, which was the least likely to crumble away in the boring-process. None of the tunnels are within

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