ZOOLOGY. 351 



a red-tailed bird constantly flying from and to the part where the 

 nest was situated in that particular carriage. Is further evidence 

 required that a parent bird did indeed travel with the train ? 



THE SWALLOW TREE. 



DR. THOMPSON, of Burlington, Vt, furnishes the Boston Traveller 

 with the following account of a curious object called the " Swallow 

 Tree," recently found in Middlebury, Vt. He says : At the time 

 the first settlements were made in the western parts of Vermont, 

 these swallow trees were quite common here, and several of them are 

 described by Dr. Williams in his history of the State. They were 

 usually very large elms, or sycamores, having extensive hollows 

 within, and an opening in the side, at a considerable height from the 

 ground, at which the swallows entered and made their egress. Early 

 each spring, and about sunrise in the morning, myriads of swallows 

 were seen to issue from the holes in these trees, and disperse them- 

 selves over the country, and, in the dusk of the evening, they were 

 observed to return again to their common roosting places in the hol- 

 lows of the trees. Thus they continued to disperse themselves in the 

 morning and collect together again in the evening, till they com- 

 menced pairing and rearing their young in the spring, and the same 

 phenomena were also observed again just before the final disappear- 

 ance of the swallows in the fall ; and for a long time the opinion pre- 

 vailed that they passed the winter in these trees in a torpid state. 

 But it is now, I believe, well settled that this resort to particular 

 trees, in early times, and to particular old chimneys in modern, as 

 common roosting places, is only a temporary arrangement attending 

 their arrival in spring, and their migration southward in autumn. 



These swallow trees, which were so common in early times, had, 

 probably many of them, been resorted to by thousands of birds, 

 year after year, for centuries. The natural consequence would be, 

 for the cavities in which they roosted, to become gradually filled up 

 with excrement, cast off feathers, exuvia of insects and rotton wood, 

 and, accordingly, trees have been found in this condition long after 

 the swallows had ceased to resort to them. One of this kind, in 

 Ohio, is described in Harris' Journal, and quoted in Wilson's Orni- 

 thology. The tree was a hollow sycamore, five feet in diameter, and 

 had been blown down. Its immense hollow was found to be filled, 

 for the space of fifteen feet, with " a mass of decayed feathers, with a 

 small admixture of brownish dust, and the exuvia of various insects." 



The tree recently found in Middlebury resembled, in most respects, 

 the one above mentioned. The tree had been blown down, and had, 

 afterwards, nearly all rotted away, leaving little remaining, excepting 

 the feathery mass, which had filled its hollow, and which was now 

 bedded in leaves and moss. The tree was, probably, an elm, and, 

 judging from the size of the cylindrical mass of the contents, the 

 diameter of its hollow must have been about fifteen inches, which 

 had been filled some six or seven feet. Of the materials which had 



