86 THE RETURN OF THE SWALLOW. 



merits. The Russian peasant in his springtime calendar has it 

 that on 25th March the swallow comes flying from Paradise and 

 brings with it warmth to the earth. On the same day the festival 

 of the Annunciation is noted in South Germany by the saying, 

 "Our Lady's Annunciation brings back the swallow." There is a 

 French saying to the same effect — " A l'Annonciation les hiron- 

 delles viennent annoncer la belle saison." At Bergamo they say 

 that on the 12th March, the festival of St. Gregory the Pope, the 

 swallow crosses the water, i.e., arrives. There is a saying in almost 

 every European language that one swallow does not make a 

 summer or spring. It is a bird curiously familiar with man, and, 

 let me say, with civilised man. It builds its nest and rears its brood 

 within and upon the walls of his house; the homely name tells us 

 so — chimney-swallow. Just as robin redbreast appears as the 

 familiar bird-spirit of English winter scenes, so does the swallow 

 appear in summer pictures. 



As to the route which the swallow follows in its migrations, a 

 good deal of ingenuity is expended in speculating on this point. 

 A writer in the Glasgoiv He raid recently, founding on the reports of 

 swallows at Coningbeg, Wexford, and in Donegal Bay in 1887 

 (which, as I have mentioned, are the very first reports for that year to 

 the committee of the British Association), asks us to believe that 

 the early appearance of these birds in Ireland is accounted for by 

 the clearly proved fact that " once on a time " continuous land, far 

 overlapping Ireland to the west, extended to Spain and Africa. 

 Along that immemorial coast line (as he calls it) he cannot doubt 

 but that swallows flew, and that when the coast foundered beneath 

 the Atlantic the hereditary principle maintained them in their 

 traditional course. This writer further points out that the 

 meridian of io° west runs through the mountains of Kerry, and, 

 skirting Portugal, touches Africa at Morocco, giving a mathemat- 

 ical crow-line for migrants from Africa to Ireland. Are we 

 expected to believe that swallows launch off from the coast of 

 Morocco direct for Ireland, following the meridian of io° west, 

 and thus are seen in Ireland before other parts of the United 

 Kingdom ? First of all, the latter point has to be proved, and 

 this is a considerable initial difficulty. A passage in the Migration 

 Report for 1886 seems to indicate that the route of migrants 

 bound for Ireland is probably along the line of the Avon and the 



