AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 241 



the first to leave of all our summer migrants, seldom 

 lingering after the first week in September. Our 

 principal acquaintance with this species was formed 

 in Spain, where it swarms in town, village, and 

 country from north to south and east to west, dashing 

 along the narrow streets of the southern cities with 

 incessant screams, and darting in and out of the 

 gloomy recesses of the clifi's which front the Bay of 

 Biscay. The Swift does not appear to be very 

 particular as to locality for its nest ; darkness seems 

 to be the only absolute requisite, crevices in rocks, 

 under the eaves of buildings, high or low, these birds 

 make their homes, often in the faces of precipices 

 inaccessible to man, and again under the roofs of 

 cottages, where they can be destroyed by the enemy 

 with no more complicated weapon than a walking- 

 stick. The nest of the Swift is a shallow arrange- 

 ment of dried grasses and a few feathers, glued into 

 a saucer-shape by secretions of the parent birds. In 

 a nest in our possession are many wing-cases of 

 beetles and apparently small scales of bark ; in this 

 case very few feathers have been used. The eggs 

 are generally three, of a dull white, and much elon- 

 gated in shape ; the young broods generally make 

 their first appearance out of the nests in the second 

 or third week of July. It is a common fallacy that 

 the Swift cannot rise from a level surface, but we 

 have more than once seen birds of this species take 

 wing, with very little apparent effort, from the deck 

 of a vessel and from the surface of a polished table. 

 This bird is a common summer visitor to almost all 

 parts of Europe, and, curiously enough, was the 

 earliest of the true spring migrants observed by us at 

 Algiers, where three Swifts put in an appearance on 



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