130 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



nature is cleanly in all her ways, the young perform this office 

 for themselves in a little time by thrusting their tails out at the 

 aperture of their nest. As the young of small birds presently 

 arrive at their fjXiKta, or full growth, they soon become im- 

 patient of confinement, and sit all day with their heads out at 

 the orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the nests, supply 

 them with food from morning to night. For a time the young 

 are fed on the wing by their parents ; but the feat is done by so 

 quick and almost imperceptible a slight, that a person must 

 have attended very exactly to their motions before he would 

 be able to perceive it. As soon as the young are able to shift 

 for themselves, the dams immediately turn their thoughts to 

 the business of a second brood : while the first flight, shaken off 

 and rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are 

 the birds that are seen clustering and hovering on sunny morn- 

 ings and evenings round towers and steeples, and on the roofs 

 of churches and houses. These congregatings usually begin to 

 take place about the first week in August; and therefore we 

 may conclude that by that time the first flight is pretty well 

 over. The young of this species do not quit their abodes all 

 together ; but the more forward birds get abroad some days 

 before the rest. These approaching the eaves of buildings, and 

 playing about before them, make people think that several old 

 ones attend one nest. They are often capricious in fixing on 

 a nesting-place, beginning many edifices, and leaving them 

 unfinished ; but when once a nest is completed in a sheltered 

 place, it serves for several seasons. Those which breed in a 

 ready finished house get the start in hatching of those that 

 build new by ten days or a fortnight. These industrious 

 artificers are at their labours in the long days before four in 

 the morning : when they fix their materials they plaster them 

 on with their chins, moving their heads with a quick vibratory 

 motion. They dip and wash as they fly sometimes in very hot 

 weather, but not so frequently as swallows. It has been observed 

 that martins usually build to a north-east or north-west aspect, 

 that the heat of the sun may not crack and destroy their nests : 

 but instances are also remembered where they bred for many 

 years in vast abundance in an hot stifled inn-yard, against a wall 

 facing to the south. 



Birds in general are wise in their choice of situation : but in 

 this neighbourhood every summer is seen a strong proof to the 

 contrary at an house without eaves in an exposed district, where 



