SOME TENNESSEE BIED NOTES. 189 



Both are invaluable in their place, useful, 

 graceful, admirable, and disgusting. The 

 vultures, the martins, and the swifts were 

 the only common aerial birds. The swifts, 

 happily, were everywhere, jovial souls in 

 a sooty dress, and had already begun 

 nest-building. I saw them continually pull- 

 ing up against the twigs of a partially dead 

 tree near my window. In them nature has 

 developed the bird idea to its extreme, 

 a pair of wings, with just body enough for 

 ballast ; like a racing-yacht, built for no- 

 thing but to carry sail and avoid resistance. 

 Their flight is a good visual music, as 

 Emerson might have said ; but I love also 

 their quick, eager notes, like the sounds of 

 children at play. And while it has nothing 

 to do with Tennessee, I am prompted to 

 mention here a bird of this species that I 

 once saw in northern New Hampshire on 

 the 1st of October, an extraordinarily 

 late date, if my experience counts for any- 

 thing. With a friend I had made an ascent 

 of Mount Lafayette (one of the days of a 

 man's life), and as we came near the Profile 

 House, on our return to the valley, there 

 passed overhead a single chimney swift. 



