92 NORTH AMERICAN OOLOGY. PART I. 



It is therefore hardly to be wondered at that the American Barn Swallow is so 

 general a favorite. 



The range of the Swallow is nearly coextensive with North America. Sir John 

 Richardson observed numbers of them, in the month of May, at Fort Good Hope, 

 the most northerly post of America, latitude 67 30'. The same writer also ob- 

 served them at Fort Chippewyan, latitude 57, as early as the 15th of May, taking 

 possession of their nests. They are abundant in Canada, and also in all the British 

 provinces. Dr. Townsend observed them in Oregon, Colonel McCall met with them 

 in New Mexico, and Dr. Woodhouse, in his Report of the Zuni Expedition under 

 Captain Sitgreaves, speaks of this species as common throughout certain portions of 

 the Indian Territory and Texas, as well as New Mexico. He also found it very 

 abundant, in company with //. hinifrons, on the prairies north of the Red Fork of 

 the Arkansas River. Dr. Gundlach and Mr. Lembeyc both give it as one of the 

 common birds of Cuba, but Mr. Gosse does not mention it as among those of the 

 neighboring island of Jamaica. 



Little is now known with certainty in regard to the localities that were once the 

 natural breeding-places of these birds before the country was settled by civilized 

 man, and before there were any of the present convenient buildings to tempt them 

 to a general and nearly universal desertion of their primitive haunts. We are, how- 

 ever, led to conjecture, from their being occasionally found to make use of the sides 

 of an old well, the abutment of a bridge, or the walls of the natural " sink-holes " 

 which abound in a limestone country, that steep, overhanging rocks, cliffs, caves, 

 and similar places, must have been their chief dependence and resort until they 

 could find safer and more convenient sites in the barns and sheds of the first settlers. 

 Swallows' Cave at Nahant, even within the recollection of many, has been one of 

 these original and primitive breeding-places. 



In the Fur countries, where the habitations of man are few and far between, ac- 

 cording to Richardson, it inhabits caves, particularly in limestone rocks, and fre- 

 quents the outhouses of the trading-posts. This is also the case in the vicinity of 

 the Lake Superior copper-mines. 



Both Wilson and Audubon have given with so much minuteness and accuracy 

 descriptions of the nest of this bird, that I can hardly hope to add anything to their 

 accounts of its elaborate and beautiful structure. A nest which I very carefully 

 examined while preparing this paper, and Avhich was constructed at the junction of 

 two rafters, under the roof of a barn, intersecting each other at a right angle, fur- 

 nishes me with what are sufficiently near the average measurements. One of these 

 rafters was placed horizontally ; upon this the nest rested. On the left side, against 

 the upright rafter, had been constructed by the pair a very curious platform, which 

 was used by them as a roosting-place, and upon which each partner alternately 

 rested, in order to keep company with and cheer the mate, when occupied with the 

 duties of incubation. Wilson, in describing the nest, speaks of this platform as an 

 extension of its edge, or as an offset. In the present case, it was an independent 

 and separate structure, though closely adjoining the nest. It seemed to afford room 

 sufficient for both birds to occupy it together, when their young were large enough 



