SWALLOWS, ???, a bird too well known to need description. Our translators of the Bible have given this name to two different Hebrew words. The first, ????, in Ps 84:3, and Pr 26:2, is probably the bird which Forskal mentions among the migratory birds of Alexandria, by the name of dururi; and the second, ????, Isa 38:14, and Jer 8:7, is the crane; but the word ???, in the two last places rendered in our version "crane," is really the swallow. So the Septuagint, Vulgate, and two ancient manuscripts, Theodotion, and Jerom, render it, and Bochart and Lowth follow them. Bochart assigns the note of this bird for the reason of its name, and ingeniously remarks that the Italians about Venice call a swallow zizilla, and its twittering zizillare. The swallow being a plaintive bird, and a bird of passage, perfectly agrees with the meaning of Isaiah and Jeremiah. The annual migration of the swallow has been familiarly known in every age, and perhaps in every region of the earth. In Ps 84:3, it is said, "The sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts." By the altars of Jehovah we are to understand the temple. The words probably refer to the custom of several nations of antiquity,