THE SWALLOW. 



199 



the reverse of all other beings ; movement alone affords him repose. 

 When he darts from the church-towers, and 

 commits himself to the air, the air cradles 



him amorously, supports, and refreshes ^^ 



him. If he would cling to any object, he 

 has only his own small and feeble claws. 

 But when he rests, he is infirm, and, as it 

 were, paralyzed ; he feels every roughness ; 

 the hard fatality of gi'avitation has re- 

 sumed possession of him ; the chief among 

 birds seems sunk to a reptile. 



To take the range of a place is a great 

 difficulty for him : so, if he fixes his nest 

 aloft, at his departure from it he is con- 

 strained to let himself fall into his natural 

 element. Afloat in the air he is free, he 

 is sovereign ; but until then he is a slave, 

 dependent on everything, at the disposal 

 of any one who lays hand upon him. 



The true name of the genus, which is 

 a full explanation in itself, is the Greek A-'pode, "Without feet." Tlie 

 great race of swallows, with its sixty species which fiU the earth, 

 charms and delights us with its gracefulness, its flight, and its soft 

 chirping, owes all its agreeable qualities to the deformity of a very 

 little foot ; it is at once the foremost among the winged tribes by the 

 gift of the perfect art of flight, and the most sedentary and attached 

 to its nest. 



Among this peculiar genus, the foot not supplying the place of 

 the wing, the training of the young being confined to the wing alone 

 and a protracted apprenticeship in flying, the brood keep the nest for a 

 long time, demanding the cares and developing the foresight and tender- 

 ness of the mother. The most mobile of birds is found fettered by 

 her affections. Her nest is not a transient nuptial bed, but a home, 

 a dwelling-place, the interesting theatre of a difficult education and 



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