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SPINE-TAILED SWALLOW. 
AUSTRALIAN SPINE-TAILED SWALLOW. 
NEEDLE-TAILED SWALLOW. PIN-TAILED SWALLOW. 
NEW HOLLAND SWALLOW. 
Hirundo caudacuta, LATHAM. 
Chetura Australis, STEPHENS. 
et macroptera, SWAINSON, 
fHirundo—A Swallow. Caudacuia. Cauda—aA tail. Acuta—Sharp. 
Tuts is the largest of the Swallows yet discovered. It is 
a native of the eastern and south-eastern part of Australia 
and Van Diemen’s Land. It is believed also to be a native 
of India. 
The only specimen of this bird that has as yet been met 
with in this country, was shot on the 8th. of July, 1846, in 
the parish of Great Horkesley, near Colchester, in Essex, by 
a farmer’s son named Peter Coveney. It is certainly a very 
strange and unaccountable circumstance, how, why, and where- 
fore this bird should have thus winged its way from so remote 
a part of the earth, our very Antipodes, to our island. 
Mr. Gould observes of this bird that it is so exclusively a 
tenant of the air that it is rarely seen to perch, and in 
cloudless weather very seldom approaches sufficiently near the 
earth to admit of a successful shot. In dull weather, and 
late in the evening when ‘the prey it seeks’ has led the way, 
it follows it at a lower elevation. ‘Its whole form is especially 
and beautifully adapted for aerial progression, and, as its 
lengthened wings would lead us to imagine, its power of flight, 
both for rapidity and extension, is truly amazing.’ ‘Before 
retiring to roost, which it does immediately after the sun 
has gone down, the Spine-tailed Swallow may frequently be 
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