ON BOSTON COMMON. 23 
lington Street, and up to the very roof of a 
house, to the great delight of at least one patri- 
otic Yankee. At another time I saw one of 
these tiny beauties making his morning toilet 
in a very pretty fashion, leaning forward, and 
brushing first one cheek and then the other 
against the wet rose leaf on which he was 
perched. 
The only swallows on my list are the barn 
swallows and the white-breasted. The former, 
as they go hawking about the crowded streets, 
must often send the thoughts of rich city mer- 
chants back to the big barns of their grandfa- 
thers, far off in out-of-the-way country places. 
Of course we have the chimney swifts, also 
(near relatives of the humming-birds!), but 
they are not swallows. 
Speaking of the swallows, I am reminded of a 
hawk that came to Boston, one morning, fully 
determined not to go away without a taste of 
the famous imported sparrows. It is nothing 
unusual for hawks to be seen flying over the 
city, but I had never before known one actually 
to make the Public Garden his hunting-ground. 
This bird perched for a while on the Arlington 
Street fence, within a few feet of a passing car- 
riage ; next he was on the ground, peering into 
a bed of rhododendrons ; then for a long time 
he sat still in a tree, while numbers of men 
