The History of the Swallows 



SINCE the days when these beautiful notes about 

 swallows were written in the year 1769 there have 

 been many changes in swallow history. 



There was an idea at that time, hah* believed in 

 even by the great observer who so lovingly wrote the 

 swallows' story, that these birds retired in winter to a 

 sleeping-place, not leaving their summer home, but 

 laying up in holes and caverns till spring came again. 

 We all know now that they travel from our chimneys, 

 roofs, and barns to distant winter quarters to the 

 groves of Italy and the palms of Africa, to the Nile 

 Valley, even to the Cape, four thousand miles from 

 home. 



And then, swallows are by far less plentiful than of 

 old. During some recent summers, everybody in the 

 country has noticed the thinness of the swallow hosts. 

 We know one downland village whose inhabitants 

 remember the days when several hundred swallows 

 would be reared under their eaves every summer, 

 together with several hundred house-martins ; but 

 now one sees in that village only two or three pairs of 

 swallows, and finds not twenty nests of swallows and 

 martins, all told. Gilbert White observed a party of 

 about four hundred martins flying about his church 

 tower at Selborne one September day in 1791, beside 



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