50 BIRDS AND ^lAN 



the air to take any pleasure in the comany of heavy 

 animals, bound to earth ; the distance is too great 

 for sympathy to exist. When we consider h^w 

 closely he is bound and how much he is to us, it is hard 

 to believe that he is wholly unconscious of our 

 benefits, that when he returns in spring, overflowing 

 with gladness, to twitter his delightful airy music 

 round the house, he is not singing to us, glad to see 

 us again after a long absence, to be once more our 

 welcome guest as in past years. But so it is. When 

 there were no houses in the land he built his nest 

 in some rocky cavern, where a she- wolf had her lair, 

 and his life and music were just as joyous as they 

 are now, and the wolf suckling her cubs on the stony 

 floor beneath was nothing to him. But if by chance 

 she climbed a little way up or put her nose too near 

 his nest, his lively twittering quickly changed to 

 shrill cries of alarm and anger. And we are no more 

 than the vanished wolf to the swallow, and so long 

 as we refrain from peeping into his nest and hand- 

 ling his eggs or young, he does not know us, and is 

 hardly conscious of our existence. All the social 

 feelings and sympathy of the swallow are for 

 creatures as aerial and swift-winged as itself — its 

 playmates in the wide fields of air. 



Swallows hawking after flies in a village street, 



