Rev. II. B. Tristram on the Ornithologtj of Palestine. 79 



found our companions gone and out of sight in the forest. 

 Grievous as was the disappointment, it wouhl have been yet 

 worse to be benighted in that wild and lawless region ; and there 

 was nothing for it but, while daylight served, to mount and fol- 

 low the track of the horses as rapidly as we might. We never 

 again met with an accessible nest. Indeed this was the only 

 instance in which we observed C. melba breeding not in large 

 colonies. Their roosting-places are few ; but what matters this 

 to a bird which can traverse the whole extent of the Holy Land 

 in an hour ? The bird does not appear to resort much to 

 Hermon or the Lebanon, pi-eferring the far more precipitous 

 though lower cliffs which line the ravines running down to the 

 Ghor. One other nesting-place we noticed, in a spot certainly 

 selected with a view to the picturesque. Just above Afka 

 (Aphek), where the ground is strewn with the marble shafts of 

 the famed temple of Venus at Adonis, the classic stream of the 

 Adonis bursts, full-grown at birth, in a prodigious volume, 

 from the foot of a shallow cave under a lofty precipice. Here 

 on the 18th June a colony of Alpine Swifts were busily engaged 

 in feeding their young. 



The scream of this bird is much louder than that of the Com- 

 mon Swift, and quite as harsh — very different from the note of 

 the Galilean. It appears less reluctant than the common 

 species to descend near the ground. It was interesting to 

 observe how rapidly the larger bird used to distance the others 

 when the three species were disporting in mid-air together, and 

 how a few of the giants would wheel and double backwards and 

 forwards among a somewhat crowded flock of the little C. ahys- 

 sinicus and yet never part company from them for any distance. 

 Palestine must be nearly the centre of its distribution, as it 

 ranges from Morocco and Gibraltar to the Himalayahs and 

 Southern India. It has not been noticed in China. 



Cypselus apus is the last to return to Palestine in the spring. 

 The first we shot was on the plain of Gennesaret on April 2nd, 

 out of a large flock chiefly composed of the other two species. 

 Yet we had observed a few lingering near Beyrout in November. 

 During the breeding-season it is far more generally distributed 

 than its congeners, but affects less the rocky and desolate ravines. 



