Mr. C. J. Cornish, in a letter to Friday's Times,
gives a most curious and interesting account of " a migration night on Chiswick Eyot,"—the migrants being swallows and martins. Between 5 and 6 o'clock on Tuesday night he noticed immense flights of these birds appearing above the eyot. At first he could not tell whence they came. Then he looked up and understood,—they were literally "dropping from the sky." "The flocks were travelling at a height at which they were quite invisible in the cloudy air, and from minute to minute they kept dropping down into sight, and so perpendicularly to the very surface of the river or of the eyot. One of these flocks dropped from the invisible regions to the lawn on the river-bank on which I stood. With. at exaggeration I may say that I saw them fall from the sky, for I was looking upwards, and saw them when first visible as descending specks. The plunge was perpendicular, till within ten yards of the ground. Soon the high-flying crowds of birds drew down, and swept for a few minutes low over the willows, from end to end of the eyot, with a sound like the rush of water in a hydraulic pipe. Then by common impulse the whole mass settled down from end to end of the island, upon the osiers. Those in the centre of the eyot were black with swallows—like the black blight on beans." Next morn- ing every swallow was gone. That is an excellent piece of observation,—a verbal photograph of the most perfect kind.
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