BEAUTIFUL and interesting as this bird is known to be, less has been said about it than of any of our common birds of agreeable song and manners. Its common names are house martin, purple swallow, American martin, and violet swallow. The young male is several years in attaining the uniform glossy violet-black plumage, the steel blue feathers appearing in gradually coalescing patches. It is common to the whole of temperate North America, wintering in Mexico and the Bermudas. It is only accidental in Europe. The adult female is glossy blue-black above, becoming hoary grayish on the forehead, and sometimes on the nape also. The young are similar to the adult female.

Ridgway says that no bird of America is more deserving of protection and of encouragement to live about the habitations of man than the purple martin. One pair of them will destroy more insects in a season than all the English sparrows in a township will kill in their life-time. Besides, their notes are pleasing to the ear, and their actions both when on the wing and when perching upon their boxes extremely interesting. During the breeding-season the male has a continued and varied song of great beauty and considerable power; and it is as much on account of the sweetness of their notes as for their familiarity and usefulness that these birds are such general favorites. In the wild woods where they have not had opportunity to avail themselves of man's hospitality they are as lovely and musical as when semi-domesticated in our door-yards, and, it is said, are in all respects exactly the same birds. When Audubon was traveling through the Middle States, he reported that almost every country tavern had a martin-box on the upper part of its signboard, and commented: "I have observed that the handsomer the box, the better does the inn prove to be." The Indians hung up calabashes for the martins, so they would keep the vultures from the deerskins and venison that were drying. Mr. Nehrling says that the martin is as well satisfied with the simple hollow gourd attached to a pole near a negro hut as with the most ornamental and best arranged martin-house in the beautiful gardens and parks of rich planters and opulent merchants. He claims that where no nesting boxes are provided our martin will not breed, and that it hardly ever accepts nesting-boxes attached to trees, preferring localities where the chance is given to dart in and out uninterrupted by any obstacle.

The struggle between the martins and sparrows is so bitter that one pair of martins watched by Mr. Widmann adopted the plan of never leaving the nest alone, taking turns in going for food, because, as he explains, "it is comparatively easy to keep a sparrow out of a box, but it is impossible for a martin to dislodge him after he has built a nest."

Mr. Keyser says that in the autumn the martins assemble in flocks, sometimes large enough to suggest an ecumenical council, and fall to cackling, twittering, discussing, and in many other ways making preparation for their aerial voyage to another clime. They really seem to regret being compelled to leave their pleasant summer haunts, if one may judge from the length and fervor of their good-byes. "Perhaps they are like human beings who have a strong attachment for home, and must visit every nook and tryst to say au revoir before they take their departure. One can easily imagine how dear to their hearts are the scenes of their childhood, and of their nest-building and brood-rearing." After departing, they sometimes return in a day or two before they begin their southward pilgrimage in real earnest. Do they get homesick after they have gone some distance, and return once more to look upon the familiar scenes? It is one of the mysteries of bird life.