78 THE Brrps Asout Us. 
marvellously sweet rose-breasted grosbeak. A sum- 
mer without swallows would be a summer with sum- 
mer left out. I cannot conceive it. 
A bird so common, so fearless, so completely at 
home in our largest towns, and ready in some in- 
stances to take advantage of the facilities afforded 
by man to nest securely, has necessarily resulted in 
the bird entering more than any other into our folk- 
lore, and as the years have rolled on strange tales 
have been told about them. So ready of wing are 
they that distance means nothing; but before this 
was realized, strange stories of their hibernating in 
the mud were abroad and very generally believed. 
That people should have thought this possible a 
thousand years ago is strange enough, but that in 
these latter days it should be reasserted as not im- 
possible is one of the remarkable features of modern 
ornithological literature. Swallows migrate, not hi- 
bernate, and that is the whole story. Dependent 
upon insects for food,—they eat berries along the 
sea-shore when migrating, it is said,—and forced to 
capture them in the air and swallow them at the same 
instant—hence the common name ?—these birds can 
only stay while insects last, and so migrate with some- 
thing more of regularity than birds that can, if they 
choose, creep up our coast and follow a river valley 
in short and easy stages. 
Wherever he comes nowadays these birds do not 
find accommodation. The imported sparrows have 
changed all that; and where we once had music, 
grace, and direct benefits conferred, we now have 
wrangling, obscenity, and injuries inflicted. The town 
