BLACK SWIFT. G25 



at first a disagreeable feeling, like the regret at the absence of 

 a familiar friend. The Swallows too become scarcer in the 

 cities, for at this season, most of those whose young are abroad 

 betake themselv^es all day to the fields, where they find an 

 abundant supply of insect food. 



" In June 1836," Mr Weir writes, "being very anxious to 

 examine some Swifts' nests, I with great difficulty procured 

 two of them from the top of the old quire of Torphichen. 

 They were formed of feathers, straw, grass, and other mate- 

 rials. The inside of them appeared to be firmly cemented to- 

 gether with wdiat seemed to me the resin of the Scotch Fir, 

 thickly intermixed with the membranous scales of the terminal 

 branch buds. 



" In the ancient town of Lauder a great number of Swifts 

 annually build. On the 1st day of August 1839, under the 

 thatch of one of the houses, in the space of twenty-five feet, 

 I examined no less than nine of their nests. They were com- 

 posed of almost the same materials, and cemented with the 

 same composition as those which I had formerly obtained. 

 Each of them contained two young ones fully fledged. When 

 feeding them the parents usually fixed themselves against the 

 face of the wall by means of their strong toes and hooked 

 claws. They had a great number of flies in their mouths, as 

 I observed some of them take three minutes and a half, others 

 four minutes in feeding their brood." 



Two of these nests, brought to me by Mr Weir for the pur- 

 pose, I have minutely examined. One of them more perfect 

 than the other, may be thus described. It is very rudely con- 

 structed, flattened, about six inches in diameter, and half an 

 inch thick ; composed of panicles of Aira coespitosa, straws 

 of oats, wheat, and grasses, intermixed with fibrous roots, 

 moss, wool, cotton, hair, and feathers of the domestic fowl, 

 partridge and rook. These materials are confusedly felted, 

 and agglutinated ; the glueing matter being of a gelatinous, not 

 of a resinous nature, and in extremely thin shreds, which 

 crackle, but do not readily burn, when flame is applied to 

 them. There is however a small quantity of the membranous 



VOL. III. s 3 



