HOUSE-MARTINS. ITT 



moss interwoven with wool. In this nest, they tread, 

 or engender, frequently during the time of building ; 

 and the hen lays from three to five white eggs. 



At first, when the young are hatched, and are in 

 a naked and helpless condition, the parent birds, 

 with tender assiduity, cany out what comes away 

 from their young. Were it not for this affectionate 

 cleanliness, the nestlings would soon be burnt up 

 and destroyed, in so deep and hollow a nest, by their 

 own caustic excrement. In the quadruped creation, 

 the same neat precaution is made use of; particu- 

 larly among dogs and cats, where the dams lick 

 away what proceeds from their young. But, in 

 birds, there seems to be a particular provision, that 

 the dung of nestlings is enveloped in a tough kind 

 of jelly, and, therefore, is the easier conveyed off, 

 without soiling or daubing. Yet, as Nature is cleanly 

 in all her ways, the young perform this office for 

 themselves in a little time, by thrusting their tails 

 out at the aperture of their nest. As the young of 

 small birds presently arrive at their r/Xifc/a, or full 

 growth, they soon become impatient of confinement, 

 and sit all day with their heads out at the orifice, 

 where the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them 

 with food from morning to night. For a time, the 

 young are fed on the wing by their parents ; but the 

 feat is done by so quick and almost imperceptible a 

 sleight, that a person must have attended very ex- 

 actly to their motions, before he would be able to 

 perceive it. As soon as the young are able to shift 

 for themselves, the dams immediately turn their 

 thoughts to the business of a second brood ; while 

 the first flight, shaken off and rejected by their 

 nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the birds 

 that are seen clustering and hovering, on sunny 

 mornings and evenings, round towers and steeples, 

 and on the roofs of churches and houses. These 



