MARTIN. 
261 
INSRSSORES. 
FISSIROSTRES. 
IIIR UNDJNIDvE. 
MARTIN. 
Hirundo urbica. 
PLATE LXV. EIG. II. 
How delightful is it, at the earliest dawn of daylight, 
when first awakening from sleep, to hear the soft, cheer¬ 
ful twitter of this gay bird, as it is forming its clay-built 
shed at the corner of our windows, or returning with 
food for its young ones ; and how barbarous the custom, 
and I deeply regret to say that I have myself been guilty, 
of shooting these inoffensive useful birds ! Ought we not 
rather to receive them as the people of the United States 
do the purple martins, which are everywhere considered 
by them as their friends and benefactors, and boxes pre¬ 
pared and hung against their houses purposely for the 
reception of their nests ? “I never met with more than 
one man/' says Wilson, “ who disliked the martins, and 
this was a penurious close-fisted German, who hated 
them because they ate his bees." 
The martins are, I fear, and I grieve to think it, yearly 
becoming less numerous in this country. In many of our 
villages, where they were very abundant, and their nests 
were clustered together under almost every “ low-roofed 
cottage-ridge," they are now never seen. In Germany, on 
the contrary, where they are unmolested, they so abound, 
that their nests are crowded together in dozens under the 
lowliest roofs. 
