MARTIN. 
HOUSE MARTIN. MARTIN SWALLOW. WINDOW MARTIN. 
Hirundo urbica, PENNANT. MOonrTasu. 
Hirundoe—A Swallow. Urbica—urbs—A city. 
‘WouLtp J a house for happiness erect, 
Nature alone should be the architect.’ 
So says the poet Cowley, and those who are wise will say 
the same, and will build after her model, and on the foun- 
dation she lays, so far as is consistent with the duties of 
life. 
The pretty chirruping of the Martin over your window is 
the pleasantest alarum to wake you up to enjoy the ‘dewy 
breath of incense-breathing morn,’ and both the associations 
of earliest recollection and the adventitious aids of poetry 
combine to invest it with a never-failing charm. So again, 
at night, when the parent bird has returned to her brood, 
for whom she has toiled all the day, and takes them under 
the shelter of her wings; what more pleasant sound is there 
in nature than the gentle twittering of the ‘happy family’— 
the unmistakeable expression of the veriest and most complacent 
satisfaction! | 
The Martin is an attendant on civilization, and endeavours 
to establish itself about the habitations of man. It cannot 
be called a native of Africa, being born elsewhere; but 1% 
visits us and other countries from thence. It frequents 
Lapland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and even Siberia, 
Jeeland, and the Ferroe Isles. 
The trite remark of Cervantes ‘una golondrina no_ pace 
yerano; ‘one Swallow does not make a summer,’ is as true 
