- SWALLOW NESTS. 251 



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Some of these bird-caverns are dreadfully exposed, particu- 

 larly a few situated on the coast ; these are washed by the sea, 

 which forces its way so deep into the latter that fish may be 

 caught in them ; but on account of the steepness of the rocks, 

 the nests can only be collected at the most imminent risk. 

 The young birds are eaten, both by the Javanese and the 

 Europeans in India ; but they are considered to be very heat- 

 ing, and are, moreover, difficult to procure. The nests on the 

 other hand, when they have been boiled to a kind of slimy 

 sort of soup, exposed in the night-time to the dew, and mixed 

 with sugar, are exceedingly cooling, and they are therefore 

 much used in violent fevers ; they are also prescribed, and 

 with great success, in cases of hoarseness and sore throats. 

 They are, however, not supposed to be possessed of any very 

 superior medical qualities, and are chiefly sold as articles of 

 luxury, and ornaments for the tables of the rich Chinese. 

 Their mode of using them is to put them, after being well 

 soaked and cleaned, along with a fat capon or duck, into an 

 earthen pot closely covered, and suffered to boil over a slow 



ifire for twenty-four hours. 

 Swallows are generally hailed as welcome guests, and allowed 

 to fix their plastered dwellings without molestation under the 

 eaves or corners of window-sills ; but when very numerous 

 they are apt to occasion a good deal of dirt, and when once 

 established it is by no means easy to drive them away. This, 

 however, may be effected by rubbing the corners of the win- 

 dows with soft soap early in the spring. This was practised 

 iwith success in a house, the windows of which used to be quite 

 darkened by the dirt, &c., occasioned by a colony of nests. 

 The Swallows on their arrival began to build as usual ; but as 

 fast as they attempted to attach their materials to the stone, 

 they slipped off. For some days they renewed their attempts, 



(but then gave the matter up ; and what was very remarkable, 

 although the soaping was never renewed, not a single Swallow 

 ever afterwards attempted to build on the windows, not even 

 on those which had not been soaped, though several built in 

 the adjacent outhouses and immediate neighbourhood. 



The same church-steeple which has enabled us year after 



