CHANGE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

pujari?" A young man instantly replied, smiling, and patting his person, "Oh he is gone to the fields with the cattle: now that the temple is given up, he must do something for his stomach." Their abandonment of idol-worship seemed complete, and not a few of them averred that they now offered prayer to the only true God; yet they evinced no disposition to embrace the profession of christianity. This they accounted for by saying, "Were we to do so now, we should be persecuted; we should lose our lands and our village: but if we wait a while longer, all the people will be of the same mind, and then we can all become christians together, without the risk that would attend such a step at present." This answer I at first regarded simply as one of those adroit subterfuges in which a Hindoo never fails; but when I heard it repeated in different neighbourhoods, and by persons between whom collision was impossible, it satisfied me that, though they had not those poignant convictions of sin which would impel them to decision at all risks, a persuasion was growing upon their minds that the day drew nigh when christianity must prevail.

CHANGE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. THE following was the form of the Lord's-prayer in the year 1300:

"Fader our in Hevne, Heleweyed be thi name, Come thi kingdam, Thi will be don as in hevene and in earth. Oor uch dayes bred give us to-day. A forgive us our dettes as we forgiven our dettours, and lede us not into temptatioun, Bote delyvere us of ybel. Amen.

CHILDREN INVITED.

INVITATION.

COME and welcome-come to Jesus-
Come and he will save you all;
He has suffered to release us-
He redeem'd us from the fall,
Precious Jesus!

May they listen to thy call.

Children, will you grieve your Saviour?
Will you slight his offer'd grace?
Can you shew him such behaviour-
Mercy beaming in his face ?
Look and love him,

Him, the Heavenly Prince of Peace.

Come at once-make no excuses-
Cast aside your sins and pray;
He who scorns, heaven's glory loses,
Oh begin the work to day.
Mould them Saviour,

As the potter moulds his clay.

Dont delay until to-morrow,

Hasten now with hearts sincere ;
Flee from sin, the cause of sorrow,
Shed the penitential tear.
May thy Spirit,
Jesus aid them to draw near.

ANSWER.

We accept the invitation;

Now our hearts we open wide,

To thy Spirit's visitation-
Come, and with us now abide.
Us, thy temples,

In us evermore reside.

D. Q.

THE BIRDS OF SUMMER.

"FATHER, here is a Swallow!" cried one of my boys on the last day of April, as I sat in the summerhouse of my little garden on that afternoon, which happened to be very fine and sunshiny, "There it is! and there is another above it, higher up in the blue sky. Dont you see it father? There it goes, over the bright edge of that cloud. There! you can hardly see it now; but it is a swallow I am sure, father. It sailed along just as they did last summer. Oh I am glad, we shall soon have summer now."

"Yes, that is a swallow certainly, and it will not be long before summer comes. But remember, Fred, the old saying, 'One swallow does not make a summer! There must be many more before summer comes."

And then the question, "Where do the swallows come from, father?" led to further talk, and then

thinking that other boys beside mine might wish to know something about these birds of English summer time, I had the above picture executed by my engraver, and turning to several "Natural Histories," I found the best in "Tiler's," which I give below.

THERE are four or five species of this family in this country; as the house and chimney swallow, the swift, the martin, and sand martin. They are distinguished, as their name would import, by their unusually large mouths, which they always have open when upon the wing, ready for swallowing all that comes within the reach or compass of their beaks. The legs are short and feet are slender; their wings are, perhaps, longer in proportion than those of any other birds; the tail, also, is very long and forked, serving as a rudder to steer the hasty passage of the swallow through the air. They have a peculiar twittering note, and fly with extreme rapidity: their whole construction appears to fit them for being almost always on the wing, as they are from earliest dawn till the close of day. They migrate, as is generally known, visiting us about the middle of April, and leaving us again at the close of September, for the warmer shores of Asia and Africa, till the returning sun has warmed our quarter of the globe, and recalled the insect tribes to life. How many millions of these are daily devoured by the swallows; and which, but for their vigilance and taste, would prove destructive to vegetation.

The house-swallow precedes the other species in its visits to our shores in the spring; and solitary individuals only of this species are at first seen; the increasing fineness and warmth of the weather lead to their multiplied and more general diffusion over the country. Their choice of chimneys for roosting and building is not a little remarkable, as they are, we believe, the only birds in creation that discover those

THE BIRDS OF SUMMER.

sooty predilections. Some, however, build in barns and other outbuildings, where an access to the roof is readily afforded them. It is a curious question, seeing the attachment of swallows to our chimneys, where they built before the invention of chimneys? For these are of comparatively recent invention in this country; and, in others, that are visited by the swallows, they are no doubt unknown. In such cases they build, as they still do in the great western forests of America, in hollow trees, which bear the closest resemblance to the places that they now choose for themselves and young. One of the early settlers, in the state of Kentucky, informed Mr. Wilson, that he cut down a large hollow beech tree, which contained forty and fifty nests of the chimney swallow. Chimneys, from their being so generally chosen by the swallows, afford more ready and greater conveniences than they could find in hollow trees. The nest is formed of small twigs, fastened together by an adhesive glue produced by the swallow. With this glue the whole nest is thickly besmeared, which is small and shallow, and attached, by one side, to the wall. The Swallow mostly lays four eggs, of a white colour. Its young, it is said, are fed during the night as well as the day; the noise made by the old ones, passing up and down the chimney, has some resemblance to distant thunder. When heavy and long continued rains fall, the nests are sometimes precipitated to the bottom, and all the contents perish. At the annual return of the swallows to the great American continent, there are, in the vast districts that are yet but thinly peopled, what are called swallow trees, where vulgar tradition asserted, that the swallows lay torpid all the winter.

Mr. Williams, in his History of Vermont, gives the following account. We think he has overstated the number of the swallows; as we presume he did not count them. Mr. Williams says:-"There was a