MAETIN.
MAR-THIN, OF THE ANCIENT BRITISH.
HOI'SE MARTIN. MARTIN SWALLOW. WINDOW MARTIN.
Hinindo urbica, PENNANT. MONTAGU.
Hirundo—A Swallow. Urbka. Urbs—A city.
'Would I a house for happiness erect,
2vTature alone should be the architect.'
So says the poet Cowley, and those who are wise will say the
same, and will build after her model, and on the foundation she lays,
so far as is consistent with the duties of life.
The pretty chirruping of the Martin from its 'loved mansionry'
over your window is the pleasantest alarum to wake you up to
enjoy the ' dewy breath of incense-breathing morn,' and both the
associations of earliest recollection and the adventitious aids of poetry
combine to invest it with a never-failing charm. 'Where they most
breed and haunt, I have observed the air is delicate.' So again, at
night, when the parent bird has returned to her brood, for whom she
has toiled all the day, and takes them under the shelter of her wings,
what more pleasant sound is there in nature than the gentle
twittering of the ' Happy Family'—the unmistakeable expression of
the veriest and most complacent satisfaction!
The 'temple haunting martlet' is an attendant on civilization, and
endeavours to establish itself about the habitations of man, but. at
the same time also it addicts itself, in some places, to natural eyries,
such as are furnished by St. Abb's Head, the Bass Rock, and the
hoary precipices of Sutherlandshire. It cannot be called a native of
Africa, being born elsewhere; but it visits us and other countries
from thence. Tt frequents Lapland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark,
and even Siberia, Iceland, and the Ferroe Isles.