But is it?

Yes; to them.  They know that bats and dormice and other things sleep all the winter; so why should not swallows sleep?  They see the swallows about the water, and often dipping almost into it.  They know that fishes live under water, and that many insects—­like May-flies and caddis-flies and water-beetles—­live sometimes in the water, sometimes in the open air; and they cannot know—­you do not know—­what it is which prevents a bird’s living under water.  So their guess is really a very fair one; no more silly than that of the savages, who when they first saw the white men’s ships, with their huge sails, fancied they were enormous sea-birds; and when they heard the cannons fire, said that the ships spoke in thunder and lightning.  Their guess was wrong, but not silly; for it was the best guess they could make.

But I do know of one old woman who was silly.  She was a boy’s nurse, and she gave the boy a thing which she said was one of the snakes which St. Hilda turned into stone; and told him that they found plenty of them at Whitby, where she was born, all coiled up; but what was very odd, their heads had always been broken of.  And when he took it, to his father, he told him it was only a fossil shell—­an Ammonite.  And he went back and laughed at his nurse, and teased her till she was quite angry.

Then he was very lucky that she did not box his ears, for that was what he deserved.  I dare say that, though his nurse had never heard of Ammonites, she was a wise old dame enough, and knew a hundred things which he did not know, and which were far more important than Ammonites, even to him.

How?

Because if she had not known how to nurse him well, he would perhaps have never grown up alive and strong.  And if she had not known how to make him obey and speak the truth, he might have grown up a naughty boy.

But was she not silly?

No.  She only believed what the Whitby folk, I understand, have some of them believed for many hundred years.  And no one can be blamed for thinking as his forefathers did, unless he has cause to know better.

Surely she might have known better?

How?  What reason could she have to believe the Ammonite was a shell?  It is not the least like cockles, or whelks, or any shell she ever saw.

What reason either could she have to guess that Whitby cliff had once been coral-mud, at the bottom of the sea?  No more reason, my dear child, than you would have to guess that this stone had been coral-mud likewise, if I did not teach you so,—­or rather, try to make you teach yourself so.