cover — an invariable accompaniment of stubble fields and a habitue of 

 grain-stacks. Although bred to a terrestial life they are quite at home in the 

 branches of a willow or alder sapling. Indeed, from the frequency with 

 which I have met them in such situations in the evening and at early 

 morning, I have even suspected that they sometimes roost so. 



Suborder Cypseli. Swifts. 



Black Swifts, Cyfseloides niger. — These erratic and almost uncanny 

 creatures appeared at Chelan several times during the summer of 1895. 

 The birds would come in a straggling flock along about 7 o'clock in the 

 morning, hawking at insects as they went, but all, in general, coming 

 from up the lake and moving eastward. I saw them only once this year, 

 on June gth. On this occasion I saw a company of a score hunting leis- 

 urely, at high noon, over the Okanogan river. In the evening of the 

 same day a hundred or so gathered, after the manner of Chimney Swifts, 

 to gyrate in social fashion, at a point on the Columbia river twenty miles 

 south from the first ones observed. 



Vaux's Swift. Choetiira -i<auxii. — The only point in the country 

 where these birds were noted was at the head of Lake Chelan, where 

 they regularly nested and roosted in the hollow trunks of dead balm trees. 



White-throated Swift, Aerojiautcs jnelanoleucus.— K%\x\^&^'i^&qa- 

 men seen while exploring the cliffs of the Columbia river gorge seems 

 referable to this species. Probably a wanderer from some detached col- 

 ony recently emigrated to this northern limit of the semi-arid region. — 

 William L. Dawson, Oberlin, O. 



GENERAL NOTES. 



A Foster-Brother's Kindness. — Sometime during the past summer 

 a friend of mine at Chelan, Wash., secured a fledgling Bullock's Oriole, by 

 rescuing it from the water where it had evidently just fallen from the 

 nest. When taken home it proved a ready pet and was given the free- 

 dom of the place. Some two weeks later my friend obtained another 

 nestling oriole from another brood and put it in a cage with the older 

 bird. Ths newcomer had not yet learned to feed himself but only opened 

 his mouth and called with childish insistence. Judge of the master's de- 

 light, and mine as a witness, when the older bird, himself but a fledg- 

 ling, began to feed the orphan with all the tender solictude of a parent. 

 It was irresistably cunning and heartsome too, for the bird to select with 



