204 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 



there are any in the country. The brickmaker bakes his 

 clay by fire; but the swallow hardens hers in the sun, and 

 makes it more tenacious by mingling with it rootlets and bits 

 of vegetable fibre to hold it closer together. So in the days 

 of ancient Egypt, when men built of sun-dried brick, they 

 mingled straw with the clay to keep it from crumbling. 



After a shower, when the puddles are still standing in the 

 roads or have dried away just enough to leave a creamy 

 stretch of mud about their edges, you may have seen a cluster 

 of swallows gathered as thick as butterflies around a puddle 

 and not unlike them in appearance; for every swallow 

 balances itself on its tiny feet with its wings raked high in 

 air and fluttering above its head. The whole cluster flickers 

 its wings unceasingly, and when one rises all the others fly too, 

 and they travel home together. Why do they keep their wings 

 up so ? And how do they carry their mud ? The first ques- 

 tion you may answer for yourself, the last one we can easily 

 settle by looking at the spot they have just left. There are 

 the little pinholes left by their toe-nails, and in .front of these 

 are creases an inch long, where the mud was taken. Evidently 

 they take the mud with their bills, not with their feet, else 

 we should not see the toe marks so distinctly. It is equally 

 evident that they must carry the mud in their mouths, for 

 their bills are too small to hold any considerable amount. In- 

 deed, if you watch them through an opera glass, you will see 

 that when they fly home their throats stick out like a chip- 

 munk's when his pouches are full of nuts. 



They come and go in companies from the barn to the mud- 

 hole. If one gets his mud sooner than the others, he flies 

 about once or twice waiting for them to get their loads. Per- 

 haps he does not get his full load at one place and rises in a 

 circle to drop again and finish filling his throat elsewhere. 



