GREAT BLUE SWALLOW. 71 



bring up his family in darkness, as his purple 

 brother. The stipe of an old palm, whose porous 

 centre decays, while the iron fibres of the exterior 

 remain strong, is his ordinary resort. At the begin- 

 ning of April, I observed several pairs flying in and 

 out of holes, bored I suppose by the Woodpecker, 

 in the stipe of a dead Cocoa-nut still tall and erect, 

 but a mere leafless post, tottering in the breeze and 

 ready to fall. At the middle of May, Sam observed 

 several pairs entering a round hole, about two 

 inches in diameter, beneath the eaves of Belmont 

 house. 



Near the end of June, when on my way in a 

 coasting boat from Bluefields to Kingston, I was 

 lying wind-bound in Starvegut Bay. There the 

 inhospitable shore is strewn with immense frag- 

 ments of limestone rock, honey-combed and fretted 

 into holes, through which the surf breaking furiously, 

 finds vent in perpendicular jets and spouts of water, 

 or in columns of spray resembling steam from an 

 engine-pipe, accompanied with crashing roar. Yet 

 I observed with interest, that the Blue Swallows 

 were frequenting these rocks, and I noticed one 

 repeatedly going in and out of a small hole near the 

 summit of a rugged mass, separated from the shore, 

 and completely isolated by the boiling surf. Lans- 

 down Guilding, in some notes on the Zoology of the 

 Caribbean Islands, (Zool. Jour. III. 408,) observes, 

 " We have but few of this family in St. Vincents : 

 among them is a Swallow, which roosts, and 1 

 believe builds, in the rock of the sea-shore. It is 

 curious," he adds, "to observe the bird in calm 



