A NEW season is begun. Parliament met to-day. London is getting full, and the price of coals has fallen. The celandine (swallow-flower) is beginning to cover the hedgerow banks of the Isle of Wight with yellow stars, and the swallows themselves will soon be with us again.

I may mention as another agreeable sign of spring the return of “Pen and Pencil,” not to the old nest, but under shelter of the old hospitality.

The Rhodians used to salute the return of the swallows with a traditional popular song, the Chelidonisma; perhaps some lady present may gratify us with a chant of the like purport. My own aim this evening is merely to give some brief natural history notes on the British swallows, drawn partly from books and partly from my own observation.

There are about sixty species of the family of HirundinidÆ, but only four kinds (counting the swift as one) are habitual visitors of the British Islands—the chimney swallow, the house martin, the bank martin (Hirundo rustica, urbica, and riparia), and fourthly the swift (Cypselus).

The chimney swallow (rustica) has a brownish-red throat, back of blue-black lustre, under part of body reddish-white, and a long forked tail. It is a bold bird, and trusting to its superior speed, dashes at a hawk whenever it sees one. It always builds near men, and makes its cup-shaped nest inside chimneys and old wells, in barns, gateways, sheds, and arches of bridges. There are four or five spotted eggs, and it brings out two broods each year. The chimney swallow has a sweet little song of its own, and is one of the earliest birds heard of a summer morning, beginning soon after two o’clock. It is said to grow very tame in confinement, but I never saw and should not like to see one in a cage. These are the most abundant of our swallows, and the same birds return year after year, while their little time endures, to the same localities, and often very likely to the same nests.

The house martin (urbica), or window swallow or martlet, is smaller and less agile than its cousin just described, and has a far shorter tail. Its feet and toes are downy. It comes later than the chimney swallow, builds amidst towns, on the outside of houses, under eaves and in window niches, and chooses a northern aspect to avoid the direct rays of the sun, which would crack its mud nest. Martlets sometimes build on the face of cliffs, as may be seen at the Giant’s Causeway. It has four or five white eggs, and brings out two broods. As a vocalist it can only get as far as a chirp, or at most a small twitter. Its body is white below, and purple on the back and wings. The house martin does not, like the chimney swallow, sweep the ground and water in its flight.

The bank swallow (riparian) or sand martin, which is so sociable with its own kind but not with man, digs horizontal and serpentine holes in banks, sloping upwards to avoid rain, where it lays in a careless nest four or six white eggs. It has sometimes, but perhaps not always, two broods. These are the smallest and wildest of our swallows; nearly mute, or with only a tiny chirp; and, when they can, frequent large spaces of water. They often fly waveringly with a quick fluttering of wings, somewhat like butterflies, and anon sail circling like other swallows. They use their old caves for some years, but may often be seen digging new ones. They are probably driven out sometimes by the fleas which, as I have often seen, abound in their habitations. Birds, indeed, free and airy as their life seems, suffer much from vermin, and the poor baby swallows are terribly preyed upon. The sand martin is mouse-coloured on the back and brownish-white below. It is the earliest to arrive in England, and may be expected now in three weeks or so. Next we may look for the chimney swallow with his long tail—then for the house martin, and latest of all comes the swift (Cypselus), which some naturalists say is no true swallow, having several anatomical peculiarities, the most noticeable being that all four toes go forward. No other bird, I think (save the Gibraltar swift), has a similar foot. The swift can cling well to the face of a wall, but cannot perch in the usual bird fashion, and gets on very badly on the ground, finding it difficult to rise on the wing. Once in the air, with its long wings in motion, it is truly master of the situation. It is one of the speediest, if not the speediest, and can keep on the wing for sixteen hours, which is longer than any other bird. The swifts are most active in sultry thundery weather. They fly in rain, but dislike wind. They are the latest day-birds in summer, and their one very shrill note may be heard up to nearly nine o’clock. Sometimes they get excited and dart about screaming, perhaps quarrelling, but usually the swallows, all of them, agree well among themselves, though they also keep a proper distance. The swifts build high in holes of walls and rocks. The Tower of London is one of their London palaces. The nest is bulky and has two white eggs. There is but one brood in the season, and the swift leaves town for Africa in August, going earliest, although he was the latest to come.

Swallows for several weeks after their arrival in England play about before beginning their nests—

“Like children coursing every room
Of some new house.”

They wait for fit weather to go away, and may then be seen sitting in rows as though meditating on their journey, perhaps dimly sorry to part—

“With a birdish trouble, half-perplexed.”

Utterly mysterious and inscrutable to us are the feelings of our lower fellow-creatures on this earth, and how the bird of passage, “lone-wandering but not lost,” finds its distant goal, is beyond man’s wit to explain.

After this I fear tedious sketch of our four winged friends, I will only add another word or two as to the name swallow, a rather odd word, entirely different from the Greek ?e??d??, and the Latin hirundo (which, unlike as it may appear, philologists tell us is formed from the Greek name). The Italians call the bird rondine (evidently from the Latin), and the French hirondelle. We get our word from the Anglo-Saxon, swalewe, and the modern German is schwalbe. What does this mean? I must own with regret that it seems to me most likely that the name is given on account of the voracity of this bird, which is engaged in swallowing gnats, beetles, bees, may-flies, dragon-flies, and all kinds of flies from break of day till sunset. The Anglo-Saxon verb to swallow is swelgan. Fain would I take the word swelgel, air, sky; but the Spanish name for our bird seems conclusive for the baser derivation. The Spaniards call it golondrina (evidently from gola, throat); and it may be added, make a cruel kind of amusement out of the gulosity of the swallows, by angling for them with fishing-flies from the walls of the Alhambra, round which the birds dart in myriads on a summer’s day—descendants of those that played round the heads of the Moorish kings, who perhaps were kinder to their visitors.