54 $jlMBl&$ OF A <DOMINIS 



always out of sight among the rafters of an outhouse, 

 in a chimney, sometimes even in the shaft of a well. In 

 the hall of a village inn in the Tyrol a pair of swallows 

 build each year under a bracket on the wall, and nutter 

 in and out and feed their nestful of youngsters, and 

 seem, like them, to care nothing for the noises of con- 

 tinual traffic. 



The swallow wears at his return his very brightest 

 plumage. He went from us in the evening of the year 

 with feathers frayed and faded, with colours dimmed by 

 sun and rain. He comes back to us with wings unworn, 

 with new lustre on his purple plumes, new chestnut on 

 his throat, new gloss upon his crown. 



"Why should he return at all ? Why should he prefer 

 our changeable climate to the brightness of his winter 

 haunt, why not settle with content among the vines and 

 fig-trees of the south ? 



Swallows spend the summer much farther northward 

 even than our islands. They nest a long way within the 

 Arctic circle. They are met with in Siberia and Ceylon, 

 in China and Australia, and are indeed among the most 

 widely distributed of birds. 



Many myths and legends have gathered round the 

 history of the swallow, and while the folk-lore of not a 

 few birds is linked with trouble and disaster, that of the 

 swallow is associated chiefly with good fortune. There 

 are, it is true, some Celtic races who regard the bird 

 with disfavour. A swallow fluttering down a chimney 

 is held by some to be augury of death ; and in Norfolk, 

 when the departing swallows settle on the church-roof 



