48 



day. 'Naj, they are not even content with the darivness of 

 their cave; but build their nests in the funnels with 

 which the roof of the grotto is pierced like a sieve ; live 

 actually in the chimney, not of a house, but of an 

 Egyptian sepulclire ! The colour of this bird, of so re- 

 markable taste in lodging, Humboldt tells us, is " of dark 

 bluish-grey, mixed with streaks and specks of black. 

 Large white spots, which have the form of a heart, and 

 which are bordered with black, mark the head, the wings, 

 and the tail. The spread of the wings, which are com- 

 posed of seventeen or eighteen quill feathers, is three feet 

 and a half. Suppressing, with Mr. Cuvier, the order of 

 Picae, we must refer this extraordinary bird to the SjMr- 



56. We can onl}^ suppose that it must be, to our popu- 

 lar sparrows, what the swallow of the cinnamon country is 

 to our subordinate swallow. Do you recollect the cin- 

 namon swallows of Herodotus, who build their mud nests 

 in the faces of the cliffs where Dionusos was brought up, 

 and where nobodv can get near them ; and how the cin- 

 namon merchants fetch them joints of meat, which the 

 unadvised birds, flying up to their nests with, instead 

 of cinnamon, — nest and all come down together, — the 

 original of Sindbad's valley-of-diamond story? 



57. Well, Humboldt is reduced, by necessities of recent 

 classification, to call a bird three feet and a half across the 

 wings, a sparrow. I have no right to laugh at him, for I 

 am just going, myself, to call the cheerfiillest and bright- 



