. The swallow book; the story of the swallow told in legends, fables, folk songs, proverbs, omens and riddles of many lands . ng song. The nests which these swallows build arecurious works of art. The outside theymake of mud, which they fetch from somepond or river bank, and with the mud theymix hairs and bits of straw to hold it to-gether. The inside they line with soft leavesand feathers. There are two settings of eggseach year, the first of five or six eggs, thesecond of three. The eggs are white,speckled with dull red spots. Their neststhey place, not apart by themselves on somelonely tree
. The swallow book; the story of the swallow told in legends, fables, folk songs, proverbs, omens and riddles of many lands . ng song. The nests which these swallows build arecurious works of art. The outside theymake of mud, which they fetch from somepond or river bank, and with the mud theymix hairs and bits of straw to hold it to-gether. The inside they line with soft leavesand feathers. There are two settings of eggseach year, the first of five or six eggs, thesecond of three. The eggs are white,speckled with dull red spots. Their neststhey place, not apart by themselves on somelonely tree top like many other birds, butside by side with the nests of their com-panions in a little colony under the eavesof our barns, or along the beams just underthe roof. In certain lands of southern Eu-rope this sociable little bird is allowed tobuild her nest in the windows of the houses,and in the crevices of the tiles of the the Orient she sometimes even puts it in- THE SWALLOW IS side the door, and by so doing she brings, asthe people believe, good fortune to the dwell-ers within. Travelers in that eastern land. JT^ ^^% ^^ have brought back I y ^^ strange stories il- (# lustrating this sociable habit of the swallow, one of the strangest being that of a noted Frenchman, who visited Asia in 1844. This is what he wrote: — The swallow has so much love for man i6 THE SWALLOW and so great confidence in him that shedwells not only in the eaves and porticoes ofhis palaces and in the porches of his houses,but she penetrates even to his bedchambeland establishes herself upon his bed. ThisI saw, myself, many times, in the city and inthe country, but more often in the saw those good people, visited by thischosen creature of the good God, surround-ing the bird families with every care, openingthe windows in the morning to let the parentbirds go out and gather food, tolerating thefilth they made .iu the room, upon the furni-ture and the bedclothing, and spending hourstog
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1912
