430 CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 



cited see any sufficient cause for such a belief. The birds were 

 seen to pass out on the first of May or in the spring when the 

 leaves began to appear on the trees, and about the middle of 

 September they were seen entering the tree for the last time; 

 but there is no information here of their being seen at any time 

 during winter either within or around the tree. This most im- 

 portant part of the matter is taken for granted without the least 

 examination, and as will be presently shown, without founda- 

 tion. I shall, I think, also prove that if these trees had been 

 cut down in the depth of winter not a single Swallow would 

 have been found either in a living or a torpid state! And that 

 this was merely a place of rendezvous for active, living birds is 

 evident from the "immense quantity of excrements" found 

 within it, which birds in a state of torpidity are not supposed 

 to produce. The total absence of the relics of nests is a proof 

 that it was not a breeding place, and that the whole was nothing 

 more than one of those places to which this singular bird resorts, 

 immediately on its arrival in May, in which also many of the 

 males continue to roost during the whole summer, and from 

 which they regularly depart about the middle of September. 

 From other circumstances it appears probable that some of these 

 trees have been for ages the summer rendezvous or general 

 roosting place of the whole Chimney Swallows of an extensive 

 district. Of this sort I conceive the following to be one which 

 is thus described by a late traveller to the westward. 



Speaking of the curiosities of the state of Ohio the writer ob- 

 serves, " In connexion with this I may mention a large collec- 

 tion of feathers found within a hollow tree which I examined 

 with the Rev. Mr. Story, May 18th, 1803. It is in the upper 

 part of Waterford, about two miles distant from the Muskingum. 

 A very large sycamore, which through age had decayed and fal- 

 len down, contained in its hollow trunk, five and a half feet in 

 diameter, and for nearly fifteen feet upwards, a mass of decay- 

 ed feathers with a small admixture of brownish dust and the 

 exuviae of various insects. The feathers were so rotten that it 

 was impossible to determine to what kind of birds they belong- 



