THE MIGRATIONS OF BIRDS.—Among all the migrants the swallow has, perhaps, attracted most attention in all ages and countries. It arrives in Sussex villages with remarkable punctuality; none of the migrants perform their journeys more rapidly than the swallows and their congeners. A swift with young ones, or during migration, covers from 1500 to 2000 miles a day. It begins business feeding its young about three o’clock A.M., and continues it till nine P.M. At that season, therefore, the swift spends nearly eighteen hours upon the wing, and it has been computed that at the ordinary rate of travelling of this very fast bird it would circumnavigate the globe in about fourteen days. At a push, if it were making forced flights, the swift would probably keep on the wing, with very brief intervals of rest, during fourteen days. The speed of the whole tribe is marvellous, and seems the more so when compared with that of the swiftest of animals that depend for their progressive powers on legs, however many legs they may be furnished with. The hare is swift, yet in Turner’s well-known picture of rain, steam, and speed the hare’s fate is sealed; she will be run over and crushed by the engine rushing in her wake. The swiftest animals would soon break down at forty miles an hour, which the swallow unconsciously accomplishes, merrily twittering all the while. All the swallow tribe are found in every part of Great Britain, including Shetland, except the swift, which is not found in those islands. Dr. Saxby, author of “Birds of Shetland,” says that one day a poor fellow, a cripple, who happened at the time to be exceedingly ill off and in want of food, came to him with a swallow in his hand. The doctor ordered the man some dinner. It seems he had opened his door, restless and half famished, when in flew the swallow and brought him, so to speak, a dinner. “After this,” said the poor fellow, “folk need na tell me that the Lord does na answer prayer.” The swallow can hardly be inelegant. When it walks, however, it does so with particularly short steps, assisted by the wings, and in accomplishing any journey longer than a few inches it spreads its wings and takes flight. It twitters both on the wing and on the nest, and a more incessant, cheerful, amiable, happy little song no other musician has ever executed. Much has been said of that “inexplicable longing” and “incomprehensible presentiment of coming events” which occasion birds to migrate from certain districts before the food supplies begin to fail. Quails, woodcocks, snipes, and many other birds, it is said, are in the finest condition at the time of commencing their migration, while none of them are emaciated at that season, so that the pinch of hunger, it is argued, cannot have yet affected them. But it should be remembered that fat as well as lean birds may feel that pinch, and that birds are very fast-living creatures, full of life, movement, and alertness, quick to observe, to feel, and to act.