152 WHITE 



note ; yet there are ears to which it is not displeasing, from 

 an agreeable association of ideas, since that note never occurs 

 but in the most lovely summer weather. 



They never can settle on the ground but through accident ; 

 and when down, can hardly rise, on account of the shortness 

 of their legs and the length of their wings ; neither can they 

 walk, but only crawl ; but they have a strong grasp with their 

 feet, by which they cling to walls. Their bodies being flat 

 they can enter a very narrow crevice ; and where they cannot 

 pass on their bellies they will turn up edgewise. 



The particular formation of the foot discriminates the swift 

 from all the British hirundines; and indeed from all other 

 known birds, the hintndo melba, or great white-bellied swift 

 of Gibraltar, excepted; for it is so disposed as to carry "omnes 

 qnatuor digitos anticos " all its four toes forward ; besides, the 

 least toe, which should be the back toe, consists of one bone 

 alone, and the other three only of two apiece, a construction 

 most rare and peculiar, but nicely adapted to the purposes in 

 which their feet are employed. This and some peculiarities 

 attending the nostrils and under mandible have induced a dis- 

 cerning 1 naturalist to suppose that this species might constitute 

 a genus per se. 



In London a party of swifts frequents the Tower, playing 

 and feeding over the river just below the bridge ; others haunt 

 some of the churches of the Borough, next the fields, but do 

 not venture, like the house-martin, into the close-crowded part 

 of the town. 



The Swedes have bestowed a very pertinent name on this 

 swallow, calling it " ring swala," from the perpetual rings or 

 circles that it takes round the scene of its nidification. 



Swifts feed on coleoptera, or small beetles with hard cases 

 over their wings, as well as on the softer insects ; but it does 

 not appear how they can procure gravel to grind their food, 

 as swallows do, since they never settle on the ground. Young 

 ones, overrun with hippobosc(Z> are sometimes found, under 

 their nests, fallen to the ground ; the number of vermin ren- 

 dering their abode insupportable any longer. They frequent 

 in this village several abject cottages ; yet a succession still 

 haunts the same unlikely roofs, a good proof this that the 



