A SELF-SACRIFICING SWALLOW.
According to a trite myth, candidates for a fellowship at All Souls, Oxford, were given a cherry pie and judged by their degree of gentility in dealing with the stones. One year the winner, so it was alleged, was such a gentleman that he swallowed the stones rather than eject them in an unrefined manner. What a lady then must be the swallow whose ways I have recently been watching at close quarters and for long periods in a cottage porch. She keeps the nest most scrupulously clean, but swallows all the offal ; and makes no fuss about it ! The male bird works hard : is a good caterer and an obedient worker ; but he has not yet been seen to rise to this height of altruism. It has been—at least in my experience—a great year for swallows, in spite of the losses we heard much of on the Austro-Italian frontier last autumn. Our swallows, as we have now as good as proved, pursue a more westerly line of migration and the only high and dangerous barrier that they meet is the Pyrenean range ; and a good many of them probably outflank even this on the western side. The race ought to flourish peculiarly. I know no bird which so constantly rears three broods ; and in the village of which I write -one pair has twice in con- secutive years reared four broods.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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