THE BARN SWALLOW. I95 



white spots in the inner web of the tail feathers, thus form- 

 ing a sort of sub-marginal band, and by the absence of the 

 white spot on the forehead, from which is no doubt de- 

 rived the specific name of Lunifrons, given in identification 

 of the other. 



Sometime in the latter half of May the Barn Swallow's 

 nest of mud, lined with straw, feathers, etc., is built — un- 

 less, as is frequently the case, the same birds return to the 

 uninjured nest of the previous year — and four or five eggs, 

 some .75 x .55 of an inch, white, specked with brown, are 

 laid. In due time, the full-fledged young are seen perched 

 in a row on the edge of the half-bowl nest, the free brim of 

 which is strikingly different from the jug-nose entrance to 

 the nest of the Eave Swallow. This row of younglings, 

 often occupying the entire edge of the nest as they sit with 

 tails inward, are exceedingly noisy on the appearance of the 

 industrious parents, and swallow eagerly the food deposited 

 in their wide-open mouths by the parent bird as she hovers 

 in front of the nest. I wonder if the capacious mouth and 

 gullet of the Swallow, so convenient for taking its insect 

 prey on the wing, did not procure for it its common name ! 

 It would seem altogether probable, though I cannot find 

 anything on the point in either dictionaries or works on 

 ornithology. Every part of the world has its Swallow or 

 Swallows of some kind, and every species of this family is 

 noted for that peculiar twitter, so strikingly conversational, 

 that the Greeks applied the name of the Swallow as an 

 epithet to designate the jargon of barbarian tongues. Listen 

 to those prolonged twitterings of the Barn Swallow's family 

 in the nest, and afterward about the beams and rafters of 

 the barn, and again as several families perch in long rows 

 on the telegraph wires, previous to migration ! Do they 

 not sound like veritable sentences of some unknown Ian- 



