as far at least as the river St. Lawrence. On the east side of the great range 

 of the Allegheny, they are dispersed very generally over the country, where- 

 ever there are habitations, even to the summit of high mountains, but on 

 account of the greater coldness of such situations they are usually a week 

 or two later in making their appearance there. On the 16th of May, being on 

 a shooting expedition on the top of Pocono Mountain, Northampton, where 

 the ice on that and on several successive mornings was more than a quarter 

 of an inch thick, I observed with surprise a pair of these Swallows which had 

 taken up their abode on a miserable cabin there. It was then about sunrise, 

 the ground white with hoar frost, and the male was twittering on the roof by 

 the side of his mate with great sprightliness. The man of the house told me 

 that a single pair came regularly there every season and built their nest on a 

 projecting beam under the eaves, about six or seven feet from the ground. 



At the bottom of the mountain, in a large barn belonging to the tavern 

 there, I counted upward of twenty nests, all seemingly occupied. In the 

 woods they are never met with ; as you approach a farm they soon catch the 

 eye, cutting their gambols in the air. Scarcely a barn to which these birds 

 can find access is without them, and as the public feeling is universally in 

 their favor they are seldom or never disturbed. The proprietor of the barn 

 just mentioned, a German, assured me that if a man permitted the Swallows 

 to be shot, his cows would give bloody milk, and also that no barn where 

 Swallows frequented would ever be struck by lightning, and I nodded assent. 

 When the turrets of superstition "lean to the side of humanity" one can 

 readily respect them. 



Early in May they begin to build. From the size and structure of the 

 nest it is nearly a week before it is completely finished. One of these nests, 

 taken on the 21st of June from the rafter to which it was attached, is now 

 lying before me. It is in the form of an inverted cone with a perpendicular 

 section cut ofif on that side by which it adhered to the wood. At the top it has 

 an extension of the edge, or ofifset, for the male or female to sit on occasion- 

 ally; the upper diameter is about six inches by five, the height externally 

 seven inches. This shell is formed of mud, mixed with fine hay as plasterers 

 do their mortar with hair to make it adhere the better; the mud seems to have 

 been placed in regular strata, or layers, from side to side ; the hollow of this 

 cone (the shell of which is about an inch in thickness) is filled with fine hay, 

 well stufTed in ; above that is laid a handful of very large downy goose 

 feathers. The eggs are five, white, speckled and spotted all over with reddish- 

 brown. Owing to the semi-transparency of the shell the eggs have a slight 

 tinge of flesh color. The whole weighs about two pounds. 



There are generally two broods in the season. The first makes its ap- 

 pearance about the second week in June, and the last brood leaves the nest 

 about the 10th of August. Though it is not uncommon for twenty or even 



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