MIGRATION OF SWALLOWS 373 



on beyond their usual bounds, like skirmishers thrown out be- 

 fore the oncome of the host of occupation. 



There is concert, too, in the campaigns of the Swallows ; 

 they act as if by consultation, and carry out agreement under 

 leadership. One may witness, in the autumn more particularly, 

 before the Swallows leave us, that they gather in noisy thou- 

 sand, still uncertain of their future movements, eager for the 

 council to determine their line of march. Great throngs fly 

 aimlessly about, with incessant twittering, or string along the 

 lines of telegraph, the eaves of houses, or the combs of cliffs. 

 In all their talk and argument, their restlessness and great con- 

 cern, we see how weighty is the subject that occupies their minds ; 

 we may fancy all the levity and impulse of the younger heads, 

 their lack of sober judgment, the incessant flippancy with 

 which they urge their novel schemes, and we may well believe 

 their departure is delayed by wiser tongues of those taught by 

 experience to make haste slowly. Days pass, sometimes, in 

 animated debate, till delay becomes dangerous. The gather- 

 ing dissolves, the sinews are strung, no breath is wasted now 

 — the coming storm may work its will now, the Swallows have 

 escaped its wrath, and are gone to a winter's revelry in the 

 land where winter's hand is weakened till its touch is scarcely 

 felt. 



All this, and more that might be written, is no news. Eeck- 

 less of space, these animated time-slaying wings, these mer- 

 curial embodiments of buoyancy, have long been favored 

 objects of the ornithologist's speculation. Conspicuous, notori- 

 ous, familiar as they are among all feather-bearers, in the ex- 

 tension of their flights, in the multitudes of individuals that 

 twice a year fly past our very face and eyes in going to and 

 from the winter quarters we have learned as well as we have 

 their summer sojourn in our midst — with all these attributes, I 

 say. Swallows are prodigies, phenomenal and problematical 

 still. Their flights have been closely watched and studied, 

 furnishing large basis for our general inductions respecting the 

 whole subject of the migrations of birds. Swallows are taken 

 as the typical migrants, whose dates of arrival and departure 

 are fixed points in the ornithologist's calendar, and known 

 factors in the great equation of birds' movements. In short, 

 no birds are better known in all that pertains to their regular 

 and normal migrations. 



Thus, the competent observer in each locality in the United 



