IN WOR'BURr HOLLOW 53 



a remark of Johnson's, which is a fair sample of what 

 we should expect from a man who preferred Fleet-street 

 to the country. " Swallows," said the great philosopher, 

 " certainly sleep all the winter. A number of them con- 

 globulate together by flying round and round, and then 

 all of a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in 

 the bed of a river." 



The "early swallow" of newspaper paragraphs is 

 often, no doubt, the sandmartin, always the first of the 

 clan to find her way across the sea. Except by the river 

 bank or about her special haunts she is much less common 

 than the swallow, from whom her plain brown plumage 

 distinguishes her well. 



Perhaps the house-martin is the best known of all the 

 race. She it is who builds beneath our eaves, and 

 brings, so legend says, good fortune where she rests. 

 She is not so completely a follower of man as the 

 swallow, and will make her nest against a cliff sometimes, 

 even when there are houses near. Like many birds, the 

 martin is fond of building in colonies. On one house 

 wall in a Bavarian village, eighty-two nests were 

 counted in a line ; and it is said that in Lapland, where the 

 natives fix boards against their houses to encourage the 

 little builders, collections of nests have been seen 

 numbering far more than that. 



Less is seen of the housekeeping of the swallow, for 

 she does not, like the martin, build under the eaves. If 

 Plutarch's story that swallows made their nests on the 

 stern of Cleopatra's galley be correct, it was in all 

 respects an unusual place to choose. The nest is almost 



