ABOUT SWALI.OW.S. 1 79 



apparition, cries. " There she is ! " All this the elder per- 

 son ratifies with "The spring is come!" Nearly the 

 same exclamations flow through a line of Aristophanes. 



" Speaking of the American barn swallow, Wilson says, 

 ' We welcome their first appearance with delight, as the 

 faithful harbingers and companions of flowery spring 

 and rudd}' summer ; when, after a long, frost-bound and 

 boisterous winter, we hear it announced that ' the swal- 

 lows are come,' what a train of charming ideas are associ- 

 ated with the simple tidings.' The human heart was 

 equally touched, whether it was beating in the bosom of 

 an ancient Greek or of a modern American." 



After giving considerable information relative to Ameri- 

 can swallows, martins and swifts, Mr. Broderip quotes 

 from a letter written in 1800, by the Rev. Walter Trevel- 

 yan from Long Witton, Northumberland, to the editor of 

 Bewick's " British Birds," in which that gentleman gives 

 a plain and unaffected account of the taming of a swift or 

 " chimmey swallow." 



" About nine weeks ago," writes the good clergyman, 

 " a swallow fell down one of our chimneys, nearly fledged, 

 and was able to fly in two or three days. The children 

 desired they might try to rear him, to which I agreed, fear- 

 ing the old ones would desert him ; and as he was not the 

 least shy, they succeeded without any difiiculty, for he 

 opened his mouth for flies as fast as they could supply 

 them, and was regularly fed to a whistle. In a few days, 

 perhaps in a week, they used to take him into the fields 

 with them, and as each child found a fly and whistled, the 

 little bird flew for his prey from one to another ; at other 

 times he would fly round about them in the air, but always 

 descended at the first call, in spite of the constant endeav- 

 ors of the wild swallows to seduce him awa)^ ; for which 

 purpose several of them at once would fly about him in all 

 directions, striving to drive him away when they saw him 

 about to settle on one of the children's hands, extended 

 with the food. He would very often alight on the chil- 

 dren, uncalled, when they were walking several fields dis- 

 tant from home. 



"Our little inmate was never made a prisoner by being 



