morrow; confinement and fatigue had made her very thin. Her plumage had lost its lustre; but in seeing her contemplate her little ones, you might conceive the maternal joy which filled her, and by what ineffable compensations she felt herself indemnified for all her privations and sufferings. After a short time the little creatures had advanced in figure; their large yellow bills were transformed into little black and charming ones; their naked bodies, covered here and there with ugly tufts, were now clothed with elegant feathers, on which the light played in brilliant flashes. They began to fly about the nest, and even to accompany their mother when she hunted for flies in the neighborhood. Cuvier could not refrain from feelings of admiration, and was somewhat affected when he saw the mother, with indefatigable patience and grace, show her children how they should set about catching flies, which darted about in the air--to suck in an incautious one, or carry away a spider which had imprudently made his net between the branches of two trees. Often she would hold out to them at a distance in her beak a booty which excited their appetite; then she would go away by degrees, and gradually draw them unconsciously off to a shorter or a longer distance from the nest. The swallow taught her children to fly high when the air was calm, for then the insects kept in a more elevated part of the air; or to skim along the ground at the approach of a storm, as then the same insects would direct their course toward the earth, where they might find shelter under the stones at the fall of the first drop of rain. Then the little ones, more experienced, began, under the guidance of their father, to undertake longer flights. The mother, standing at the entrance of the nest, seemed to give her instructions before they departed: she awaited their return with anxiety, and when that was delayed, took a flight high, very high in the air, and there flew to and fro till she saw them. Then, full of a mother's joy, she would utter cries of emotion, scud before them, bring them back to the nest, happy and palpitating, and seemed to demand an account of the causes of their delay. The autumn arrived. Some groups of swallows collected together on the very roof of the mansion of Fiquanville. After grave deliberation, and a vote being taken (whether by ballot or otherwise, Cuvier does not mention), the young ones of the nest, along with the other young swallows of the same age, were all placed in the middle of the troop; and one morning a living cloud rose above the chateau, and flew away swiftly due east.