A DEARTH OF SWALLOWS IN SOUTHERN EUROPE.
To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Over the signature of Senor Juan Tellez Lopez in the Nuevo Munclo of to-day is printed the following letter, of which I submit a translation in the hope of eliciting comments from yourself or from some of your correspondents.—I am5
"THE SWALLOWS COME NOT.
The swallows, those charming and legendary birds, harbingers of fine weather, are beginning to forget us. For some years past, in France, Italy, and Spain, a continuous diminution of the hirandines has been observed. In spite of the splendid weather enjoyed this spring in the whole of Southern Europe, in some of our districts none of these birds have been seen.
The cause of this phenomenon, strange and—from more than one point of view—lamentable, is the colonization of North Africa. The swallow leaves our climes at the end of September or the early part of October, and returns to nest with us at the close of March. But the heat of Africa is not the reason of their passage across the Mediterranean to Spain, Italy, and the South of France. What they seek in Europe are human habitations whereon to build their nests ; water and earth to form the mud of which those nests are mainly made ; above all, insects with which to feed themselves and their young. Since France has colonized Algeria, and Spain North Moroeee, they find in Northern Africa water, earth, vegetable, and insect, food enough. Therefore it is that in spring the swallows are under no necessity to quit their winter quarters. So they remain in Africa.
Here we have one of those biological correlations that at first blush surprise us, yet are explicable on simple grounds. Peaceful penetration' in Morocco and in Tripoli will increase the number of sufferers from marsh fever in Spain and Italy. It is well known that marsh fever is transmitted by the poison-bearing mosquito, culex anopheles, which inoculates the human subject through the skin with the Laveran parasite. And since swallows are the ohiof enemies of these insects, the diminution in the number of swallows facilitates the multiplication of those mosquitoes. Let us pray, then, that we may not wholly and for ever lose the beautiful bird of which Becqueri sang 1"
Previous page
