do this? Try it. This is my test. If you cannot find food for prayer in this world of many necessities, how shall you find employment for praise, in a region where necessity, and want, and pain, and fear, have no footing? If you do not enough adore redeeming mercy, to give thanks for it here; if your heart cannot commune with God for half an hour in this state, would His eternal presence and unceasing communion be less than intolerable to you in that country, where all behold, and enjoy, and adore? This test is simple, and it is infallible. O! do not turn from it, till you have tried it. Haply, it may be the means by which Divine grace shall cause the first pulse of spiritual life to awake in your heart. M. G. L. D. SEVENTH WEEK-MONDAY. BIRDS.-NESTS OF SWALLOWs. I SHALL close this selected account of nidification, by a short detail of the various peculiarities in the nestbuilding of the swallow tribe, one of the most remarkable, and generally favored by man, of the winged race. "The swallow," says Sir H. Davy, "is one of my favorite birds, and a rival to the nightingale; for he glads my sense of seeing as the other does my sense of hearing. He is the joyous prophet of the year, the harbinger of the best season. He lives a life of enjoyment amongst the loveliest forms of Nature; winter is unknown to him, and he leaves the green meadows of England in autumn, for the myrtle and orange groves of Italy, and for the palms of Africa." The same sentiment is poetically expressed by Anacreon: "Gentle bird, we find thee here! When Nature wears her summer vest, Early in the spring, when the gnat and the beetle put off their earthly robes, and venture into the air, the swallow is seen returning to the British shore, from its long migration; but it does not begin to build till the sun has acquired more power, and the increasing numbers of the insect tribes promise a plentiful supply of food for its future progeny. The nest is constructed with great art, with mud carried in its bill from some neighboring brook, well tempered, and moistened with water. It is kept firm by long grass and fibres of various plants; within, it is lined with feathers, those of the goose being preferred, from their warmth, and the neatness with which they admit of being packed. There are three kinds common in this country,-the chimney swallow; the window swallow, or martin; the sand-bank swallow, or sand-martin. The first of these leaves its nest open at the top, the two last take care to secure theirs with some kind of covering. Wilson gives some interesting details of the building habits of these birds in America, where they differ from English swallows in various particulars, as well as in color, which is of a bright chestnut on the belly, where ours is pure white. "Early in May," says he, "they begin to build. From the size and structure of the nest, it is nearly a week before it is completely finished. One of these nests, taken on the 21st June, from the rafter to which it was closely attached, is now lying before me. It is in the form of an inverted cone, with a perpendicular section cut off, on that side by which it adhered to the wood. At the top, it has an extension of the edge, or offset, for the male or female to sit on occasionally. The upper diameter is about six inches by five, the height externally seven inches. The shell is formed with mud, mixed with fine hay as plasterers do their mortar with hair, to make it adhere the better. The hollow of this cone is filled with fine hay, well stuffed in; above that is laid a handful of very large downy goosefeathers. Though it is not uncommon for twenty and even thirty pairs to build in the same barn, yet every thing seems to be conducted with great order and affection." The window swallow is remarkable for occasionally selecting singular situations for its place of incubation, and for the tenacity with which it adheres to its choice when it has once completed the building. M. Hebert mentions a pair which built on the spring of a bell; and says that, though the concussion, when the bell was rung, prevented the young from being hatched, they continued to inhabit the insecure nest for the rest of the season. Another pair, mentioned by Bingley, built for two successive seasons on a pair of garden-shears, stuck up against the boards in an out-house; and another still, attached their tenement to the wings and body of a dead owl, hung up on the rafter of a barn, and so loose as to be moved by every gust of wind. This last was placed as a curiosity in the Leverian Museum. Shakspeare, in his own characteristic style, has described the peculiar habits of this agreeable little bird. "This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve MACBETH. The singular method which the house martin sometimes takes to revenge itself on a sparrow when it endeavors to avail itself, as it not unfrequently does, of the labors of this ingenious architect, by taking forcible possession of its habitation, has been noticed by several writers. The following instance has been detailed to me by a friend, who was an eyewitness to the whole transaction:-At Millfieldhill, in Northumberland, two pairs of swallows were accustomed to rebuild their hereditary nests, one at each upper corner of a bedroom window. One year, after the little "clay-built sheds" were just completed, a sparrow thought proper to ensconce herself in one of them. Immediately the outraged pair began to twitter with a loud and irritated note, and, darting frequently in at the door of the nest, endeavored to dislodge the intruder. But in vain. The sparrow, protected as behind a battery, sat with her bill, a formi dable weapon of defence, in the middle of the entrance, and gave so warm a reception to the besiegers, that, after a long and fierce contest, the lawful owners were obliged to yield to the fraudulent occupier; but not unrevenged. They retired, for a time, along with their neighbors of the opposite corner, as if for consultation, and by and by were seen returning in a band, apparently to renew the struggle with these fresh auxiliaries. But no such thing; each was loaded with a mouthful of clay, and, setting diligently to work, adhering by their claws to the outside of the nest, they had, before nightfall, completed their ingenious object of retaliation, by entirely building up the entrance to the nest, and thus leaving the robber sparrow a helpless captive, immured in a prison, where she had hoped to secure for herself a commodious habitation. Here the sparrow remained closely pent up till next morning, when a maid-servant, taking pity on the prisoner, restored her to liberty, by drawing down the upper sash of the window. This operation, however, destroyed the structures of both the friendly pairs; but, nothing discouraged, they immediately recommenced their laborious task, and, in a few days, had reerected them in the same site. We may well inquire if it was simple instinct which led to this combination and ingenious device. And if so, our next inquiry will be, how this kind of instinct is to be defined, so as to distinguish its operations from those of reason. There is a species of swallow called Salanguano, which inhabits Java, and other islands of the Indian Archipelago, whose nests are of a very remarkable construction; and, being edible, and highly esteemed by Chinese epicures, form a valuable article of commerce. They differ considerably in their composition; and the manner of procuring their materials, and constructing them, is more a matter of conjecture than of certainty. Some authors, among whom is Goldsmith, assert that the substance of these nests is a sort of froth of the sea, or of the spawn of fish, which is alleged to be strongly aromatic; some describe it as a kind of gum, collected by the birds from the tree called Calambone; others; again, would have us to believe, that it is a viscous humor, discharged by them through the bill at the season of reproduction. Whatever this singular substance may be, it is deposited by the swallows in deep caverns, frequently very dangerous of access, yet where human cupidity and epicurism have found means to penetrate. "The most remarkable and productive caves in Java," says Mr. Crawford, " of which I superintended a moiety of the collection for several years, are those of Karanbolang, in the province of Baglen, on the south coast of the island. There the caves are only to be approached by a perpendicular descent of many hundred feet, by ladders of bamboo and ratan, over a sea rolling violently against the rocks. When the mouth of the cavern is attained, the perilous office of taking the nests must often be performed by torchlight, by penetrating into recesses of the rock, where the slightest trip would be instantly fatal to the adventurers, who see nothing below them but the turbulent surf, making its way into the chasms of the rocks. The common prices for these nests at Canton, are, for the most esteemed kinds, about six pounds sterling per pound weight, while the inferior sorts scarcely average more than half of that enormous sum. From Java, there are exported about 27,000 lbs., the greater part of which is of the first quality. From the Saluk Archipelagoes, between two and three times that quantity is exported. It is computed, that 30,000 tons of Chinese shipping is employed in this extraordinary trade; and that the whole yearly quantity consumed is not less than 242,400 lbs. In the Indian Archipelago, at the prices already quoted, this property is worth 1,263,519 Spanish dollars, or £284,290. It forms a considerable branch of the revenues of the Crown." I cannot close this sketch of the various modifications of that instinct with which it has pleased the Creator to endow the winged tribes, without again soliciting attention to the variety and wisdom of the contrivances by which the safety, both of the parents and their progeny, is provided for, regarding, as they do, not merely the peculiar habits of the birds themselves, and the suscep |