THE SWALLOW. 199 
the reverse of all other beings; movement alone affords him repose 
When he darts from the church-towers, and 
commits himself to the air, the air cradles 
him amorously, supports, and refreshes 
him. If he would cling to any object, he 
has only his own small and feeble claws. 
But when he rests, he is infirm, and, as it 
were, paralyzed ; he feels every roughness ; 
the hard fatality of gravitation has re- 
sumed possession of him ; the chief among 
birds seems sunk to a reptile. 
To take the range of a place is a great 
difficulty for him: so, if he fixes his nest 
aloft, at his departure from it he is con- 
strained to let himself fall into his natural 
element. Afloat in the air he is free, he 
is sovereign ; but until then he is a slave, 
dependent on everything, at the disposal 
of any one who lays hand upon him. 
The true name of the genus, which is 
a full explanation in itself, is the Greek A-pode, ‘“ Without feet.” The 
great race of swallows, with its sixty species which fill the earth, 
charms and delights us with its gracefulness, its flight, and its soft 
chirping, owes all its agreeable qualities to the deformity of a very 
little foot ; it is at once the foremost among the winged tribes by the 
gift of the perfect art of flight, and the most sedentary and attached 
to its nest. 
Among this peculiar genus, the foot not supplying the place of 
the wing, the training of the young being confined to the wing alone 
and a protracted apprenticeship in flying, the brood keep the nest for a 
long time, demanding the cares and developing the foresight and tender- 
ness of the mother. The most mobile of birds is found fettered by 
her affections. Her nest. is not a transient nuptial bed, but a home, 
a dwelling-place, the interesting theatre of a difficult education and 
