212 THE COMMON (OR BLACK) SWIFT. 



The Common or Black Swift. 

 (Cypselus Murarius.) Temn. 



" Go, mark the swift in rapid, giddy wing, 

 Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing." 



— White. 



Dr Latham was the first w r ho suggested the propriety of 

 separating the swifts from the swallows. Temnic, Illiger, and 

 others adopted the generic term Cypselus for these birds. Like 

 the swallows and martins, their mouth opens as far back as the 

 eyes. Their gape is three-quarters of an inch wide, but their 

 bills are very small and weak, tapering to a narrow, blunt point, 

 which shows that Nature never meant them to live by pecking — 

 but by flying ; and, like all her work, she has succeeded 

 wonderfully in making a masterpiece of flight. The tongue is 

 also very small — only a quarter of an inch long — and slit. The 

 salivary glands are large, and placed under the tongue in two 

 large masses, so that the mouth is abundantly supplied with 

 that viscid secretion so useful in catching their insect food. 

 The tail is deeply forked, the lateral feathers being \\ inch 

 longer than the middle ones. The bill, feet, and eyes are black. 

 The plumage blackish brown, glossed with green ; throat white. 

 Length to end of tail, 7 J inches ; extent of wings, 16-J inches; 

 the wings, 7 inches ; and tail, 3 J inches long, which are longer 

 in proportion than any other bird's. The bill is only a 

 quarter of an inch long, and the tarsus hardly half an inch. 

 The female is a little less and lighter in colour. Like the 

 swallows, they moult before they come to us, and arrive 

 in perfect plumage, which becomes abraded before they leave 

 us, to be again renewed in Africa or Asia. They arrive at 

 St Andrews about the 1st of May, and at once resort to 

 their breeding-places, in the crevices of the old ecclesiastical 

 stronghold of Popery — the Castle of St Andrews — where 

 Archbishops James Beaton, Hamilton, Trail, and others lived, 

 and where Cardinal David Beaton was killed ; and, for the 

 want of pointing, is now the stronghold of the swift. They 

 also frequent the Cathedral ruins and Witch Lake cliffs, and 

 Scaurs on the seaward side of the little grey old city by the sea. 

 But into the tower of old St Kule they cannot pierce — its hard, 

 undecaying stone and excellent mortar being proof against the 



