SOME TENNESSEE BIBB NOTES. 189 



Both are invaluable in their place, — useful, 

 graceful, admirable, and disgusting. The 

 vultures, the martins, and the swifts were 

 the only common aerial birds. The swifts, 

 happily, were everywhere, — jovial souls in 

 a sooty dress, — and had already begun 

 nest-building. I saw them continually pull- 

 ing up against the twigs of a partially dead 

 tree near my window. In them nature has 

 developed the bird idea to its extreme, — 

 a pair of wings, with just body enough for 

 ballast ; like a racing-yacht, built for no- 

 thing but to carry sail and avoid resistance. 

 Their flight is a good visual music, as 

 Emerson might have said ; but I love also 

 their quick, eager notes, like the sounds of 

 children at play. And while it has nothing 

 to do with Tennessee, I am prompted to 

 mention here a bird of this species that I 

 once saw in northern New Hampshire on 

 the 1st of October, — an extraordinarily 

 late date, if my experience counts for any- 

 thing. With a friend I had made an ascent 

 of Mount Lafayette (one of the days of a 

 man's life), and as we came near the Profile 

 House, on our return to the valley, there 

 passed overhead a single chimney swift. 



