24 



LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



who in his own good time will send the desired 

 change. 



Still, shivering mortals may be pardoned for 

 looking with intense anxiety for the winged herald 

 of summer, whose advent ever has been and ever 

 will be hailed by man. A Greek design is now 

 before me, representing three persons of different 

 ages. The one on the left, a young man in the 

 flower of youth, exclaims, as he points to the bird 

 flying above him, "Behold a swallow!" The 

 centre figure, a man of more advanced but still 

 vigorous age, seated, like the former, has just 

 turned his up-lifted head, saying " True, by Her- 

 cules!" and at the same moment a boy, standing 

 and pointing to the welcome apparition, cries, 

 " There she is." All this the eldest personage 

 ratifies with " The spring is come!" Nearly 

 the same exclamations flow through a line of 

 Aristophanes.* 



Speaking of the American barn swallow,f 

 Wilson says, " We welcome their first appear- 

 ance with delight, as the faithful harbingers and 

 companions of flowery spring and ruddy summer ; 

 and when, after a long, frost-bound, and boisterous 

 winter, we hear it announced that ' the swallows 

 are come,' what a train of charming ideas are 

 associated with the simple tidings." The human 

 heart was equally touched, whether it was beat- 

 ing in the bosom of an ancient Greek or of a 

 modern American. 



The length of the American bird is seven 

 inches, and its alar extent thirteen. The bill is 

 black ; the upper part of the head, neck, back, 

 rump, and tail coverts steel blue, the color de- 

 scending roundly on the breast. The forehead 

 and chin are deep chestnut, and the lining of the 

 wing, belly, and vent, light chestnut. The wings 

 and tail are of a brown or sooty black, glossed 

 with reflections of green. Tail deeply forked, 

 the two external feathers being an inch and a half 

 longer than those next to them, and tapering 

 towards their ends ; each feather, with the excep- 

 tion of the two middle ones, is marked on the 

 inner vane with an oblong white spot. The eyes 

 are dark hazel, the sides of the mouth of a yellow 

 hue, and the legs dark purple. Such is the 

 plumage of the male. 



The female differs from her mate in having the 

 under parts of a rufous white slightly clouded with 

 a rufous hue, and her external tail feathers are 

 shorter than those of the male. 



They are nearly a week in finishing their nest, 

 which they commence early in May. Wilson 

 describes it as being in the form of an inverted 

 cone, with a perpendicular section cut off on that 

 side by which it adheres to the wood. At the 

 top it has an extension of the edge, a sort of 

 offset, for the male or female to sit on occasion- 

 ally ; the upper diameter is about six inches by 

 five, the height externally seven inches. Mud 

 mixed with fine hay, as plasterers mix their mor- 



iStf, x.r.H. Equites. 

 T Hirundo rufa, Gm. ; Hirundo Americana, Wilson. 



ar with hair to make it adhere the better, and 

 wearing the appearance of having been placed in 

 regular strata or layers from side to side, forms 

 he shell, which is about an inch in thickness. 

 The interior of the cone is filled with fine hay 

 well stuffed in, and above the hay lies a handful 

 of very large downy goose feathers. On this soft 

 receptacle repose five eggs, white, specked, and 

 spotted all over with reddish brown. A slight 

 flesh-colored tinge is due to the semi-transparency 

 of the egg shell. 



On the 16th of May, being on a shooting expe- 

 dition on the top of Pocano Mountain, North- 

 ampton, when the ice on that and on several suc- 

 cessive mornings was more than a quarter of an 

 inch thick, Wilson observed with surprise a pair 

 of these swallows which had taken up their abode 

 on a miserable cabin there. It was then about 

 sunrise, the ground white with hoar-frost, and the 

 male was twittering on the roof by the side of his 

 mate with great sprightliness.* The man of the 

 house told him that a single pair came regularly 

 there every season, and built their nest on a pro- 

 jecting beam under the eaves, about six or seven 

 feet from the ground. At the bottom of the 

 mountain, in a large barn belonging to the tavern 

 there, Wilson counted twenty nests, all seemingly 

 occupied. In the woods, he says, they are never 

 met with ; but as you approach a farm they soon 

 catch the eye, cutting their gambols in the air. 

 Scarcely a barn to which these birds can find ac- 

 cess is without them ; and as public feeling is 

 universally in their favor, they are seldom or 

 never disturbed. The proprietor of the large barn 

 above-mentioned, a German, assured Wilson, that if 

 a man permitted the swallows to be shot, his cows 

 would give bloody milk, and also that no barn where 

 swallows frequented would ever be struck with 

 lightning ; " I nodded assent," adds this charming 

 and amiable writer ; " when the tenets of super- 

 stition lean to the side of humanity, one can read- 

 ily respect them." 



Our transatlantic brethren have also their 

 " chimney swallow, "f described with his usual 

 felicity by Wilson, who remarks that the noise 

 which the old ones make in passing up and down 

 the funnel has some resemblance to distant thun- 

 der. When heavy and long-continued rains pre- 

 vail, the nest loses its hold ; if this disaster oc- 

 curs during the period of incubation, the eggs are 

 of course destroyed when the loosened nest is 

 precipitated to the bottom." But kind nature has 

 provided for the safety of the brood if the misfor- 

 tune happen before they can well fly ; for the 

 muscular power of the feet and the sharpness of 

 the claws of the nestlings, even when they are 



* Our swallow is equally matutinal ; and our own Gray 

 has truly and pathetically associated it with the other 

 early rural sounds : 



The breezy call of incense-breathing mom, 

 The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 



The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 

 No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 



t Hirundo pelasgia, Linn. 



