THE PERCHING BIRDs. 79 
sparrows and modern municipal politicians are much 
alike, and the world will be bettered when both are 
exterminated. Experiment has shown, however, that 
we can have martins, if we will, in spite of the spar- 
rows. This means no greater labor than to close the 
boxes erected for them while the birds are gone. 
When they come and are given possession, they can 
hold their own against the pothouse politicians or 
sparrows. I know of instances where this has been 
tried, and with complete success. I know of nothing 
more summery, more complete in the way of birds 
and their music, than to listen to their few notes, 
which being so frequently uttered, and by so many 
individuals, is rather the slightly interrupted flow 
of sweet sounds, the momentary dying away of the 
zolian harp when the wind ceases for the instant. 
The species known as the Eave, Cliff, or Crescent 
Swallow is of somewhat irregular distribution, judg- 
ing from what we read, but probably there is no bird 
that was earlier impressed upon my attention. As long 
ago as 1848 there was a colony of them in sight of 
my home, and from 1850 to 1862 they occupied the 
eaves of a barn that was within the range of. my earli- 
est rambles. My neighbors all knew them as “ Rocky 
Mountain Swallows,” saying they had but recently 
arrived, but in an old manuscript there is a refer- 
ence to these swallows as building on the “old” 
bridge, which was removed in 1821, and they had 
been building there for several years. Iam surprised 
that Wilson overlooked this colony, not thirty miles 
from Philadelphia, and more than once he was in this | 
immediate neighborhood. The principal feature that 
