The swifts build high in holes of walls and rocks. The Tower of London is one of their London palaces. The nest is bulky and has two white eggs. There is but one brood in the season, and the swift leaves town for Africa in August, going earliest, although he was the latest to come. Swallows for several weeks after their arrival in England play about before beginning their nests— “Like children coursing every room Of some new house.” They wait for fit weather to go away, and may then be seen sitting in rows as though meditating on their journey, perhaps dimly sorry to part— “With a birdish trouble, half-perplexed.” Utterly mysterious and inscrutable to us are the feelings of our lower fellow-creatures on this earth, and how the bird of passage, “lone-wandering but not lost,” finds its distant goal, is beyond man’s wit to explain. After this I fear tedious sketch of our four winged friends, I will only add another word or two as to the name swallow, a rather odd word, entirely different from the Greek _χελῖδών_, and the Latin _hirundo_ (which, unlike as it may appear, philologists tell us is formed from the Greek name). The Italians call the bird _rondine_ (evidently from the Latin), and the French _hirondelle_. We get our word from the Anglo-Saxon, _swalewe_, and the modern German is _schwalbe_. What does this mean? I must own with regret that it seems to me most likely that the name is given on account of the voracity of this bird, which is engaged in swallowing gnats, beetles, bees, may-flies, dragon-flies, and all kinds of flies from break of day till sunset. The Anglo-Saxon verb to swallow is _swelgan_. Fain would I take the word _swelgel_, air, sky; but the Spanish name for our bird seems conclusive for the baser derivation. The Spaniards call it golondrina (evidently from _gola_, throat); and it may be added, make a cruel kind of amusement out of the gulosity of the swallows, by angling for them with fishing-flies from the walls of the Alhambra, round which the birds dart in myriads on a summer’s day—descendants of those that played round the heads of the Moorish kings, who perhaps were kinder to their visitors. THE RETURN OF THE SWALLOWS. “OUT in the meadows the young grass springs, Shivering with sap,” said the larks, “and we Shoot into air with our strong young wings, Spirally up over level and lea; Come, O Swallows, and fly with us Now that horizons are luminous! Evening and morning the world of light, Spreading and kindling, is infinite!” Far away, by the sea in the south, The hills of olive and slopes of fern Whiten and glow in the sun’s long drouth, Under the heavens that beam and burn; And all the swallows were gathered there Flitting about in the fragrant air, And heard no sound from the larks, but flew Flashing under the blinding blue.