L^08 The Black Swift. 



and the swifts could not follow them among the herbage or 

 foliage, and so perished for lack of food. They had arrived 

 unusually early this season. The 12th or 15th of May was the 

 usual time, but large number.s of them arrived here last Tuesday 

 or Wednesday, and there was another large arrival that (Saturday) 

 morning. Starting from some far-off sea-board in the south, they 

 arrived here invariably, according to his observation, about nine 

 or ten o'clock in the morning. Mr Service remarked on the 

 extremely long halcate wing and forked tail, and pointed out that 

 the pectoral muscles, on which the power of flight depends, are 

 extremely thick. From the very earliest minutes of daylight until 

 the last minute or two of daylight in the evening they were on the 

 wing, swimming along and flying with the utmost ease. At the 

 height of midsummer, when we had something like nineteen or 

 twenty hours of daylight, the swifts disappeared into the blue 

 heavens, out of sight altogether, and were not to be found in their 

 usual roosting places. He long thought that they were going 

 after the flies, which rise to a great height on the warm summer 

 evenings ; but someone had suggested that they roosted in the air, 

 by continuing their flight when at the surface of the earth we had 

 something like daylight. Last year at the end of June and be- 

 ginning of July we had some superlatively clear evenings, and he 

 satisfied himself during that time that they did not come down 

 again during the night to the place where a large colony of them 

 were located, near his own house. Their nesting habits were 

 peculiar. They would only breed at a great height, where they 

 were safe from enemies, either feathered or four-footed : not 

 under the eaves of cottages, as was said in some parts of England. 

 In his experience they would only be found in the top storeys of 

 large mill buildings or public buildings, or in a hole where a 

 brick had fallen out of a chimney close to the copestone, and in 

 ruined steeples or some of the picturesque old buildings that we 

 have in this district. When building their nests one would often 

 see them at this time flying along in their usual headstrong fashion 

 and lifting pieces of feather, straw, moss, or other material blown 

 about by the wind. He had often seen them catch up such 

 materials while in full flight and carry them off to their nests. 

 The nest was an extraordinary huddle of miscellaneous matter, 

 held together by a sort of glutinous secretion, no doubt emitted 



