on: {A pair of barn swallows bring food to their nestling}]

BARN SWALLOWS.

When I was a youngster,--and that, let me tell you, young friends,
was some time ago,--they used to say that swallows lived in the mud
all winter, as the eels do. The books made no such stupid blunder;
only the ignorant people, such as never seem to use their eyes or
their reason. It was one of the popular errors of the time. Silly as
the notion seems, it has been held by a great many respectable
persons.

Possibly the error may have arisen from the fact that the moment the
swallows appear in any locality, in the spring of the year, they
immediately search out some muddy place, where they can get materials
for their nests. First they carry a mouthful of mud, then some threads
of dry hay or straw, then more mud, and so on. These frequent visits
to a marshy locality might readily lead an unobserving person to
imagine that the birds came from the muddy recesses in the banks. But,
of course, they are on a very different errand.

Having commenced their nests, the swallows rest during the warmest
part of the day, so that the sun may dry their work, and make it hard
and strong. Then more mud is plastered on--more threads of straw; and
so the industrious birds continue until the body of the nest is
completed. A nice, soft lining of fine grass or hair finishes the
whole, and makes a summer home for both birds and their young.

Unlike most other birds, swallows often repair old nests, if the
frosts and storms of winter have injured them, as they generally do;
and sometimes the birds come back to the same locality for several
years. They select some unexposed corner, under the eaves of a barn or
house, if possible pretty high from the ground, and in a very few days
the entire dwelling, lining and all, will be completed.

If unmolested, barn swallows will form quite a colony in the space of
a few years. But, if their nests are injured or torn down, or their
young ones are stolen away or disturbed, the birds forsake the
locality forever. Where a number of families live together, their
chattering, when, as the evening comes on, they are catching gnats and
flies for supper, or feeding their young ones, is very pleasant and
diverting. And there is music in their language, too--music which a
thoughtful person is ever glad to hear.

Last summer, when business was dull, I went on a vacation, away up
into the Granite State. While passing through the town