THE PERCHING BIRDS. 79 



sparrows and modern municipal politicians are much 

 alike, and the world will be bettered when both are 

 exterminated. Experiment has shown, however, that 

 we can have martins, if we will, in spite of the spar- 

 rows. This means no greater labor than to close the 

 boxes erected for them while the birds are gone. 

 When they come and are given possession, they can 

 hold their own against the pothouse politicians or 

 sparrows. I know of instances where this has been 

 tried, and with complete success. I know of nothing 

 more summery, more complete in the way of birds 

 and their music, than to listen to their few notes, 

 which being so frequently uttered, and by so many 

 individuals, is rather the slightly interrupted flow 

 of sweet sounds, the momentary dying away of the 

 aeolian harp when the wind ceases for the instant. 



The species known as the Eave, Cliff, or Crescent 

 Swallow is of somewhat irregular distribution, judg- 

 ing from what we read, but probably there is no bird 

 that was earlier impressed upon my attention. As long 

 ago as 1848 there was a colony of them in sight of 

 my home, and from 1850 to 1862 they occupied the 

 eaves of a barn that was within the range of my earli- 

 est rambles. My neighbors all knew them as " Rocky 

 Mountain Swallows," saying they had but recently 

 arrived, but in an old manuscript there is a refer- 

 ence to these swallows as building on the " old" 

 bridge, which was removed in 1821, and they had 

 been building there for several years. I am surprised 

 that Wilson overlooked this colony, not thirty miles 

 from Philadelphia, and more than once he was in this 

 immediate neighborhood. The principal feature that 



