218 SOME COMMON LAND-BIRDS. 



If you wish to know how dauntless is the spirit of the mar- 

 tin let me tell you a little story. For many years a colony 

 of martins have nested in a house on the gable of one of the 

 tannery sheds in Brewer, Maine. The tannery itself, a large 

 wooden structure, stood not more than thirty feet from the 

 shed, but disconnected. In the year 1897, the martins returned 

 on the twenty-second of April, fought their annual battle with 

 the English sparrows, and settled down for a few days before 

 they began to keep house. There were six or eight in the 

 flock, which was never a large one. On the first day of May, 

 just at dusk, the tannery caught fire. The martins were 

 asleep for the night and must have been awakened by the 

 shouts of men and by the glare and crackling of the fire. 

 From the first the building was doomed, though the firemen 

 made an effort to save it, and took their stand on the wind- 

 ward side near by the martin house. But the heat there was 

 terrible, and they were forced to fall back to a much greater 

 distance. Not so with the martins, however; it was their 

 home, and they would fight fire as they had fought sparrows. 

 They never retreated from it, but wheeled round it with the 

 fierce battle-love of war-eagles, drenched by the heavy streams 

 of water so that they could hardly fly, scorched by the heat, 

 but heeding neither fire nor water, the roar of the flames, the 

 rending of timbers, the puffing of engines, nor the noise of the 

 crowd. They had no nest nor eggs to protect, but they never 

 thought of deserting the house they had fought for even if it 

 cost them their lives. It is pleasant to know that their house 

 was saved and that they bred and brought up their families 

 there, and sang to them little home-made ballads of the great 

 events of the year, the 'fire and the fight with sparrows, a sort 

 of swallow-saga of exultation. 



