100 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



that red-letter day in the sporting calendar — the 

 twelfth — is patent to every observer ; but it is a 

 fact easily established that no bird is more regard- 

 less of the gun. On one occasion I witnessed a con- 

 tinual battery, of about an hour-and-a-half 's duration, 

 from two guns against a pair of swifts. The swifts 

 were feeding their young in the nest in a crevice of 

 an old castle, which, being closely surrounded by 

 trees, made the killing of the birds difficult to inex- 

 jjerienced marksmen. The birds came and went 

 with the utmost regularity and fearlessness. Some- 

 times the swifts would round into the nest or 

 depart therefrom so rapidly that the shooters had 

 not time even to take a bungling aim before the 

 birds were out of sight. One, however, was ulti- 

 mately shot ; but the other, undeterred by the loss of 

 its mate, assiduously fed the young ones till they 

 took wing some nine days after. I have it on un- 

 doubted authority that the shooting was carried on 

 with more or less regularity for at least three weeks^ 

 The young squires had received new breechloading 

 guns, and the swifts were considered the most con- 

 venient objects on which to try their skill in the use 

 of the new weapons. 



The scare of shooting, then, can have nothing to 

 do with the early or late departure of the swift 

 from Scotland any more than the capricious departure 

 of the swallow from Egypt can be attributed to the 

 presence of the cholera. The late arrival and early 

 departure of this species, as has been suggested by 

 Gilbert White, is probably owing to the comparative 

 absence or abundance of the insects on which it 

 feeds. Its hunting ground is much higher in the 

 air than that of the swallow ; and the existence of 

 its prey may be dependent on fluctuating conditions 

 of atmosphere. If this be so, the presence or absence 

 of the swift, and its sometimes leaving its young — ■ 

 capriciously, if not cruelly, as it seems to us — may 

 be dependent on the aerial existence of myriads of 

 creatures that seem to live above man and his 

 earthly belongings. 



