366 BIRDS OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
350. Hirunpo piMiprata. Pearly-breasted Swallow. 
This Swallow is very rare in the neighbourhood of Cape Town, 
but becomes more common on the mainland. It will be as well to 
treat the peninsula bounded by False and Table Bays as apart from 
the continent. The vast tract of land called the “ Cape Flats,” 
together with Table Bay on the one hand, and False Bay on the 
other, quite shut it off from the mainland, so to speak; and to aid 
in this isolation, the mainland ends in an abrupt precipitous wall of 
mountains, which are only to be passed in one or two places. 
Doubtless the peninsula of Table Mountain was once an island, and 
“Table” and “ False Bays” part of a strait between. As soon as 
the hills are reached on the opposite side of Table Bay, this Swallow 
commences; and from Swellendam Mr. Cairncross writes :—“ It is 
very common, and builds its nest generally under the thatch of an 
old mill or stable, where it is quieter than in a dwelling-house, lays 
a small white egg, and tradition says that it drives the sparrow and 
house-swallow (H. cucullata) from their nests, occupies them, and 
breeds therein. For this reason it receives no mercy from the 
farmer, but its eggs and young are destroyed whenever met with.” 
We found it abundant all along the route as far as Nel’s Poort ; 
there it was breeding among the rocks, and under the eaves of Mr. 
Jackson’s barn. They construct a nest of mud very similar to that 
of H. cucullata, but without the elongated neck. The eggs, three 
or four in number, are pure white: axis, 7’’’; diam., 5”. We have 
also found it breeding about the Berg River. Victorin procured it 
at the Knysna and we ourselves have met with it near Grahams- 
town, where it breeds. Professor Sundevall described it originally 
from specimens obtained by Wahlberg near Port Natal. Mr. 
Andersson writes :—‘ These Swallows are tolerably common in 
Damara Land, where they arrive about November; but on the 
Okavango river I have seen them as early as the lst of September. 
They do not stay any great length of time in Damara Land, in fact 
barely long enough to rear their young. In December 1863 a pair 
of these birds took up their abode in my dining-room at Otjimbinque 
where they half completed a nest and then abandoned it ; another 
pair (at least I conjectured that they were not the same) after a time 
continued the labour ; but finally they also abandoned the nest whilst 
still incomplete ; the next season, however, it was finished, probably 
