BANK-SWALLOWS. 255 
crows and small hawks that lie in wait ready to pounce 
upon the first poor little fellow that launches upon the un- 
tried air. Those that manage to run the gauntlet of the 
hawks collect in small companies by themselves, and have a 
good time hunting by day and roosting at night among the 
river-reeds, until the autumn migration. “At this time, 
Salerne observes,” says Latham, “that the young are very 
fat, and in flavor scarcely inferior to the ortolan.” Some- 
times the parents forsake their progeny in the nest, and 
seem generally to care less for them than is usually the 
case among swallows. 
But not the young alone are exposed to enemies. It 
would seem as though the situation of the nest precluded 
invasion, yet, if they are near the haunts of the house-spar- 
row, they are sure to be dispossessed of their homes by that 
buccaneer. Snakes, too, can sometimes reach their holes; 
weasels, like that one Mr. Hewitson tells us of, are often 
sharp enough to make their entrée from above: school-boys 
regard the pink-white eggs a fine prize; and, last and worst 
of all, the bank-swallows are many times utterly worried 
out of their galleries by fleas and young horse-flies, which 
swarm and increase in their nests until the bird finds en- 
durance no longer a virtue, and digs a new /atebra. 
