II. THE SWALLOW. 59 



swallows of Herodotus, who build their mud 

 nests in the faces of the cliffs where Dionusos 

 was brought up, and where nobody can get 

 near them ; and how the cinnamon merchants 

 fetch them joints of meat, which the unadvised 

 birds, fl3'ing up to their nests with, instead of 

 cinnamon, — nest and all come down together, — 

 theoriginalof Sinbad's valley-of-diamond story? 



57. Well, Humboldt is reduced, by neces- 

 sities 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 cheerfullest 

 and brightest of birds of the air, an owl. All 

 these architectural and sepulchral habits, these 

 Egyptian manners of the sand-martin, digging 

 caves in the sand, and border-trooper's habits 

 of the chimney swallow, living in round towers 

 instead of open air, belonging to them as con- 

 nected with the tribe of the falcons through 

 the owls ! and not only so, but with the mam- 

 malia through the bats ! A swallow is an 

 emancipated owl, and a glorified bat ; but it 

 never forgets its fellowship with night. 



58. Its ancietzt fellowship, I had nearly 

 written; so natural is it to think of these 



