78 THE BIRDS ABOUT 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 



