390 THE CHIMNEY SWIFT. 



In the uncultivated condition of the country, this bird 

 placed its nest in a hollow tree, but, being one of those 

 birds which have taken advantage of the conveniences of 

 civilization, it now resorts to the chimney, where, though 

 perhaps somewhat discommoded by soot and occasionally 

 by smoke, it is the freest possibly from all its enemies. 

 Look in, through the stove-pipe hole of that large, old-fash- 

 ioned chimney, and behold that cute little basket of a nest! 

 About the size of one-half of an ordinary sauce-dish, it 

 seems tipped up against its sooty wall, and holds long, 

 translucent white eggs (.80X.48), of which the fresh yolks 

 appear most elegant through the shell, and close up to it. 

 How pretty they look on those freshly-broken twigs, severed 

 from the tree by the bird in flight, and glued together with 

 saliva! Scarcely could they have a finer setting than is 

 afforded by that exquisite bit of rustic architecture, remind- 

 ing us, in the midst of our artificial civilization, of the free 

 elegance of primeval life. 



Never shall I forget how I was startled from a sound 

 sleep, one black night of a fearful thunder-storm, by a nest 

 of full-grown Swifts which had fallen to the bottom of a 

 bracket-chimney, and were squalling and beating their 

 wings against the wall-paper, stretched like a drum-head 

 across a stove-pipe hole. It sounded like a flock of winged 

 imps in the central space of the room. 



"The glue-like substance," constituting so important a 

 part in the nest-structure, is a viscid matter secreted by 

 glands in each side of the head of the bird and mixed with 

 its saliva. This is a common product of the Swifts, and is 

 especially noted in the case of the edible nest of the Sea 

 Swallow of the Malay archipelago. " It gathers from the coral 

 rocks of the sea a glutinous weed or vci2.r\xs.Q fuscus^ which it 

 swallows and afterward disgorges, and then applies this 



