150 
swallow, once numerous, is now unknown. 
“If this destruction goes on for a few years 
longer,” continues the report, ‘‘ France will in 
ten years have no more swallows except in her 
collections.” 
Unhappily for us, the homeward path of our 
migrants lies through France, and thus it hap- 
pens that our own particular birds are killed 
in thousands on the Mediterranean coast as 
they alight, spent and breathless, on the land. 
The most destructive means employed is the 
treacherous wire, on which the tired travelers 
too trustfully alight, and are slain wholesale 
by an electric discharge. 
This is a swift, and perhaps a painless death, 
but the report alludes also to snares and even 
hooks. One shudders to think of the little 
creatures fluttering in agony upon a baited 
hook—for what? To furnish an adornment 
for some Parisian belle ‘all gentleness, mercy 
and pity.” 
This is the reason why this year so many of 
NATURE'S REALM, 
us miss the pleasant twitter of the martins 
round our eaves; why the nests where we have 
so often seen them cling are crumbled and de- 
serted. This is why the swallows come no 
more to their nests among the rafters. 
How dark to us would be the dawn of spring 
if on the empty sky we should watch for them 
in vain! How cold the summer days in which 
we heard no more their snatches of sweet song, 
nor caught the glitter of their sunny wings! 
They would be to us as to the poet the van- 
ished faces of his friends— 
-** Something is gone from Nature since they died, 
And summer is not summer, nor can be.” 
[This delighttul leaflet is taken from ‘ The 
Idyls of the Field,” by Francis A. Knight, and 
published by Roberts Brothers, of Boston. A 
companion volume, ‘‘ By Leafy Ways,” by the 
same author and publishers, is now on our 
table, and both books are replete with matter 
that will charm all readers who are fond of 
natural history.—ED. | 

