ON BOSTON COMMON. 23 



lington Street, and up to the very roof of a 

 house, to the great delight of at least one patri- 

 otic Yankee. At another time I saw one of 

 these tiny beauties making his morning toilet 

 in a very pretty fashion, leaning forward, and 

 brushing first one cheek and then the other 

 against the wet rose leaf on which he was 

 perched. 



The only swallows on my list are the barn 

 swallows and the white-breasted. The former, 

 as they go hawking about the crowded streets, 

 must often send the thoughts of rich city mer- 

 chants back to the big barns of their grandfa- 

 thers; far off in out-of-the-way country places. 

 Of course we have the chimney swifts, also 

 (near relatives of the humming-birds !), but 

 they are not swallows. 



Speaking of the swallows, I am reminded of a 

 hawk that came to Boston, one morning, fully 

 determined not to go away without a taste of 

 the famous imported sparrows. It is nothing 

 unusual for hawks to be seen flying over the 

 city, but I had never before known one actually 

 to make the Public Garden his hunting-ground. 

 This bird perched for a while on the Arlington 

 Street fence, within a few feet of a passing car- 

 riage ; next he was on the ground, peering into 

 a bed of rhododendrons ; then for a long time 

 he sat still in a tree, while numbers of men 



