164 



Mary added, that swallows have two broods 

 during the summer, and that she had somewhere 

 read, that it was only the strong early brood that 

 took flight to warmer regions; but that the young 

 birds hatched late in the year, being incapable 

 of distant migration, seek shelter in holes and 

 hollow trees, and wherever they can lurk in 

 safety in the winter. 



Mary afterwards shewed me a passage about 

 swallows in Latrobe's Journal, a book which I 

 have more than once mentioned to you. He 

 writes from the settlement of Groenkloof, to the 

 north of Cape Town. 



" Every morning I am greeted by the pleasant 

 chirping of two swallows which have a nest in the 

 corner of my room, under the ceiling. There is 

 hardly a room, kitchen, or outhouse, in the 

 country, without these inmates, and it would be 

 thought next to murder to kill them. They build 

 their nests of clay in the shape of a bottle ; they 

 line them with the softest down, and, though they 

 leave the country during the winter, the same 

 birds always return to the same nests after their 

 emigration. As the room doors usually stand 

 open in the day, they go in and out whenever 

 they please ; but if the door is shut, they give 

 notice of their wish to go abroad, by a gentle 

 piping and flying about the room ; and no one 

 thinks it troublesome to let tnem out : indeed, I 

 have often left my bed to open the door for 

 them." 



