AMERICAN BARN SWALLOW. 



103 



When our clime the sunbeams gild, 

 Here your airy nest you build ; 

 And, when bright days cease to smile, 

 Fly to Memphis or the Nile." 



About the middle of February, or early in March, this species is 

 usually met with in Florida and Georgia. About the beginning of 

 April they are seen in the Middle States. Their migrations ex- 

 tend as far as Alaska, Greenland, and the West Indies. The Barn 

 Swallow is very rapid when on the wing, which enables it to pass 

 promptly from one country to another, to more' favorable climates. 

 Professor R. A. Oakes, a well-known writer on the science of Orni- 

 thology, publishes a very interesting account of " The Swallow in 

 Myth and Song," from which we take the following : 



" From his familiar intercourse with the human race, the swal- 

 low has become endowed with every kindly quality. The Scandi- 

 navians call him the bird of consolation. In that bitter agony, 

 through which the sins of the world have become as white as snow, 

 they claim the Swallow came and spread his wings beneath the 

 cross to lighten the load of the Savior, and when the last great suf- 

 fering came which caused the very earth to shudder and hide its 

 face in darkness, the loving bird hung with pity over the convulsed 

 brow and softly sung— Salva ! Salva I Salva ! 



" Pliny, who accords to all animals the possession of faculties 

 akin to those of man, tells us that the Swallows refuse to visit 

 Bizya, because of the crime of Tereus, and that they never enter 

 the houses of Thebes, because that city had been so often captured. 

 Every year, he adds, near the city of Coptos, on an island sacred 

 to Isis, they strengthen the angular corners with chaff and straw, 

 thus effectually fortifying it against the river. Night and day 

 they persevere in this labor, and many work so unremittingly that 

 they perish. 



" Possibly this work is done in honor of the Egyptian goddess 

 whoonce assumed their lovely guise. In his paper on Isis and 

 Osiris, Plutarch, the most charming of essayists, tells us that after 

 Typhon had treacherously enticed Osiris into the curious ark, had 

 fastened the cover, making it a living tomb, and had thrown it into 

 the sea ; after the sea had cast it back upon the coast of Byblos, 

 and the heath in which his coffin lodged, had grown into a beauti- 

 ful tree, inclosing it within the trunk ; after the king, admiring the 

 unusual size of the plant, had cropped its bushy parts and made it 

 the support of the roof of his house, then Isis came, and, by tender 

 endearments, obtained access to the king's dwelling. Thus living 

 once more in the hidden presence of her beloved, she would turn 

 herself into a Swallow, and unceasingly fly around the imprisoned 

 coffin, moaning his misfortune and her own sad fate. 



" So when Ulysses, after many years' wandering, returns weary 

 and foot-sore to his home to only find it thickly beset with suitors 

 for faithful Penelope's hand, Athenia encourages him to do battle, 

 and, in the words of Homer — 



' Willing longer to survey 

 The sire and son's great act, withheld the day, 

 By further toils decreed the brave to try, 

 And level poised the wings of victory ; 

 Then with a change of form eludes the sight, 

 Perch'd like a Swallow on a rafter's height, 

 And unperceived enjoys the rising fight.' 



" A Swallow chirped around the head of Alexander the Great 

 while he slept, and awakened him to warn him of the machinations 

 which his family were plotting against him. 



" St. Francis Assissi, the purest and loveliest of all the later 

 saints, when preaching at Alviane, could not make himself heard 

 from the twittering of the Swallows which at the time were build- 

 ing their nests ; pausing, therefore, in his sermon, he said : * My 

 sisters, you have talked enough ; it is time that I had my turn. Be 

 silent, and listen to the word of God !' And they were silent im- 

 mediately. 



" Of the musical powers of the Swallow, not much can be said 

 in praise. Gilbert White, whose delightful book is full of notes on 

 the Swallow, tells us that he • is a delightful songster, and in soft 

 sunny weather sings both perching and flying on trees in a kind of 

 concert, and on chimney-tops.' The Greeks, however, had a 

 proverb advising men not to harbor Swallows as they were bab- 

 blers. So in the fable, when the Swallows boasted to the Swans 

 of their twittering constantly for the benefit of the public, they were 

 answered that it was better to sing little and well to a chosen few 

 than much and badly to all. Virgil, in the fourth Georgic, rather 

 slightingly designates them as the « chattering Swallows,' and 



Isaiah, as if reproving himself, says : ' Like a Swallow do I chat- 

 ter.' A son of the Greek comedian, Aristophanes, whose name 

 was Necostratus, and who was also a devotee of the muses, thus 

 sings of them — 



* If in prating from mom till night, 



A sign of our wisdom it be, 



The Swallows are wiser by right, 



For they prattle much faster than we.' 



" Against this rhyme of the old Greek poet let us place this 

 verse of one of our charming modern singers, Mr. C. G. Leland : 



* Oh, spring bird of the early flowers, first minstrel of the year, 

 Fast darting herald of the morn— right welcome art thou here. 

 Thou art the truest troubadour, for who to-day doth sing 

 So constantly of winter past — so oft of coming spring.' 



" Shakespeare, the sublimest master of all, has painted the 

 Swallow in such brilliant colors that all other pictures seem tame 

 beside it : 



4 The guest of summer, 

 The temple-hunting martlet, does approve 

 By his loved masonry, that heaven's breath 

 Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze, 

 Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bild 

 Hath made its pendent bed, and procreant cradle. 

 Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed 

 The air is delicate.' 



" In all weather folk-lore the Swallow plays a conspicuous part. 

 Spenser tells us — 



' When Swallow peeps out of her nest, 

 The cloudy welkin cleareth.' 



** In Gay's Pastoral we find — 



' When Swallows fleet soar high and sport in air, 

 He told us that the welkin would be clear.' 



" A sign of rain, Smart, in his Hop Garden, tells us, is when 



1 The Swallows, too, their airy circuits wave, 

 And, screaming, skim the brook. 



" As during damp weather the insects on which the Swallows 

 feed hug the earth or flutter low over streams, while the warm 

 sunshine and the clear bright atmosphere tempt them to more ex- 

 tended journeys, these prognostications may be taken as a pretty 

 sure guide. It was because they thus unremittingly pursued their 

 prey, that Pythagoras, who believed in the transmigration of souls, 

 refused them shelter beneath his roof. So Chaucer dismisses our 

 bird in this doubtful couplet — 



' The Swallow, morder of bees smale, 

 That maken honey of flouers fressh of hewe.' 



" Of the intelligence of this bird all observers in natural history 

 furnish ample record. Considering the size of his brain his men- 

 tal resources are wonderful. M. Dupont de Nemours gives an ac- 

 count of one * which had unhappily slipped its foot into a slip-knot 

 of pack-thread, the other end of which was attached to a spout of 

 the College of Four Nations. Its strength was almost exhausted ; 

 it hung at the end of the thread, uttered cries, and sometimes raised 

 itself as if making efforts to fly away. All the Swallows of the 

 large basin between the bridges of the Tuileries and the Pont Neuf, 

 and perhaps from places more remote, had assembled to the num- 

 ber of several thousand. Their flight was like a cloud ; all uttered 

 a cry of pity and alarm. After some hesitation, and a tumultuous 

 counsel, one of them fell upon a device for delivering their com- 

 panion, communicated it to the rest, and began to put it into exe- 

 cution. Each took his place ; all those who were at hand went in 

 turn, as if in the sport of running at the ring, and, in passing, 

 struck the thread with their bills. These efforts, directed at one 

 point, were continued every second, and even more frequently. 

 Half an hour was passed in this kind of labor before the thread 

 was severed and the captive restored to liberty.' Linnagus, the 

 great naturalist, gives an account of a Sparrow taking up its abode 

 in the nest of a Swallow, and resisting every attempt, not only of 

 its true occupant, but of its companions, to oust the intruder. Af- 

 ter vain attempts, during which the Sparrow only intrenched him- 

 self the more securely, the Swallows resorted to new measures. 

 They commenced bringing mud in their bills, and gradually walled 

 up the entrance to the nest, thus burying their enemy in a living 

 tomb. Many like instances have been recorded by ornithologists 

 who have lived since the days of the great Swedish naturalist. 



"Jesse, in his Gleanings from Natural History, tells of a Swal- 

 low's nest having been blown down in a severe storm, of a com- 



