PERCHING BIRDS. 161 
it seeks our dwellings, as the sanctuary where its tender 
young will be safe; and this, combined with its gentle, 
pleasing manners, justly makes it a general favourite. 
Wherever the swallow is found it seems to possess the 
same instinctive confidence in man, and the same prefe- 
rence for buildings. 
In this country a chimney is most generally chosen 
by the swallow wherein to erect its nest; but in this 
selection I have never observed it show any particular 
preference for a shaft in a stack of chimneys more than 
for an isolated one. I fancy the only condition which 
seems greatly to influence it in this respect is, that it 
shall not be one which is in constant use. In my father’s 
house there was an isolated chimney, which certainly 
was not used more than once or twice a year, and for at 
least thirty years I never knew this without a nest. It 
was a short, straight shaft, up which when a boy I 
have often looked with longing eyes at the prize above ; 
and once or twice I remember an unfortunate young one 
tumbling down into the empty fireplace when essaying to 
leave the nest on its first journey. There was a window 
at a short distance, nearly on a level with the chimney- 
top, and I have spent hours, at various times, in watch- 
ing the busy labours of the parent birds in constructing 
and repairing their nest. In some years the winter rain 
_and snow would be so heavy as to demolish the frail 
structure, when a new one had to be built; in others it 
merely required a little patching, or a new lining of 
feathers, to make it habitable; but, with very few ex- 
ceptions, the same angle of the chimney was always 
selected for the new nest, and it never varied more than 
a few inches in its distance from the top. 
Though the swallow does not rank high as a songster, 
M 
