SWALLOW-TIME, 95° 
the sky together with the ruddy-throated chimney- 
swallows, and the great swifts; but though it is hay- 
time and the apples are set, yet eight eave-swallows is 
the largest number I have counted in one afternoon. 
They did not come at all in the spring. After the 
heavy winter cleared away, the delicate willow-wrens 
soon sang in the tops of the beautiful green larches, the 
nightingale came, and the cuckoo, the chimney-swallow, 
the doves softly cooing as the oaks came into leaf, and 
the black swifts. Up to May 26 there were no 
eave-swallows at the Sussex hill-side where these notes 
were taken ; that is more than a month later than the 
date of their usual arrival, which would be about the 
middle of April. After this they gradually came back. 
The chimney-swallows were not so late, but even they 
are not so numerous as usual. The swifts seem to have 
come more in their accustomed numbers. Now, the 
swallows are, of all others, the summer birds. As well 
suppose the trees without leaves as the summer air 
without swallows. Ever since of old time the Greeks 
went round from house to house in spring singing the 
swallow song, these birds have been looked upon as the 
friends of man, and almost as the very givers of the 
sunshine, \ 
The swallow’s come, winging 
His way to us here ; 
Fair hours is he bringing, 
And a happy new year ! 
They had a song for everything, the mill song, the 
reapers’ song, just as in Somerset, the apple country, 
they still have a cider song, or perhaps, rather, an 
orchard song. Such rhymes might well be chanted 
about the hay and the wheat, or at the coming of the 
green leaf, or the yellowing of the acorns, when the 
