176 SWALLOWS. 



this nest is lined with fine grasses and feathers, which are 

 often collected as they float in the air. 



"Wonderful is the address which this adroit bird shows all 

 day long, in ascending and descending with security through 

 so narrow a pass. When hovering over the mouth of the 

 funnel, the vibrations of her wings acting on the confined 

 air, occasion a rumbling like thunder. It is not improbable 

 that the dam submits to this inconvenient situation so low 

 in the shaft in order to secure her broods from rapacious 

 birds, and particularly from owls, which frequently fall down 

 chimneys, perhaps in attempting to get at these nestlings. 



The swallow lays from four to six white eggs, dotted with 

 red specks ; and brings out her first brood about the last 

 week in June, or the first week in July. The progressive 

 method by which the young are introduced into life, is very 

 amusing : first, they emerge from the shaft with difliculty 

 enough, and often fall down into the rooms below : for a day 

 or so, they are fed on the chimney-top, and then are con- 

 ducted to the dead leafless bough of some tree, where, sitting 

 in a row, they are attended with great assiduity, and may 

 then be called perchers. In a day or two more, they become 

 fliers, but are still unable to take their own food ; therefore, 

 they play about near the place where the dams are hawking for 

 flies ; and when a mouthful is collected, at a certain signal 

 given, the dam and the nestling advance, rising towards each 

 other, and meeting at an angle, the young one all the while 

 uttering such a little quick note of gratitude and complacency, 

 that a person must have paid very little regard to the wonders 

 of Nature that has not often remarked this feat. 



The dam betakes herself immediately to the business of a 

 second brood as soon as she is disengaged from her first, 

 which at once associates with the first broods of house- 

 martins, and with them congregates, clustering on sunny 

 roofs, towers, and trees. This hirundo brings out her second 

 brood towards the middle and end of August.* 



* The number of insects taken on the wing by swallows, especially when 

 they have young to feed, must be enormous, and their utility is great in propor- 

 tion. Let me give an instance of it. In a village in Gloucestershire where 

 there were several hop-gardens, some young farmers amused themselves for 

 two or three summers in practising with their guns on the swallows, and either 

 killed or drove them away. The consequence was that the hop-binds were infested 



