The arrival of three migrants at any rate interests every
class in the population : of the swallow tribe (who twit with the spring " .the sweated worker), the cuckoo and the nightingale ; and nowadays we may not only watch the arrival here, but follow the journey hitherwards. M. Delamain himself (so, I believe) telegraphs to London the arrival of various birds in his Gironde, and even our daily papers announce with more prominence than is given to fashionable arrivals, the topping of the Alps or Pyrenees by the pioneer swallows. " One swallow does not make spring," as Aristotle quoted in the toughest of his treatises ; but in England, if not in Greece, their coining is usually very punctual; and each species has its normal date. This spring I heard the first migrant, a chiff-ehaff, the very day the first daffodil opened. They were equal in daring.
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