134 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



they do not mind the smoke, and remain in the chimney. 

 I did not see them this year [1749] till late in May. l.nt, 

 in the ensuing year [1750] they arrived on the 3d of 

 May, for they appear much later than the other swallows." 

 (This is not true of them at present. They invariably 

 follow the bank-swallow, and precede by several days 

 the rest of the swallow tribes. The chimney-swallow, 

 furthermore, is not a true swallow but a swift, birds of 

 a very different family, but with similar habits.) It is 

 remarkable that each feather in their tail ends in a stiff, 

 sharp point, like the end of an awl ; they apply the tail 

 to the side of the wall in the chimneys, hold themselves 

 with their feet, and the stiff tail serves to keep them up. 

 They make a great thundering noise all the day long by 

 flying up and down in the chimneys ; and, as they build 

 their nests in chimneys only, and it is well known that 

 the Indians have not so much as a hearth made of ma- 

 sonry, much less a chimney, but make their fires on the 

 ground in their huts, it is an obvious question, Where did 

 the swallows build their nests before the Europeans came 

 and made houses with chimneys? It is probable that 

 they formerly made them in great hollow trees." 



This view of Kalm's is correct, as is well known. I 

 had the good fortune in 1869 to find a "great hollow 

 tree " in a piece of woodland that was thus tenanted by a 

 colony of these birds. The nests did not vary at all from 

 those found in chimneys. I judged the cause of this return 

 to the old-time habit of nesting in trees was the fact that 

 the chimney of a small house near by, in which the swal- 

 lows were accustomed to build, had been closed to them 

 by a wire netting, and, as the nearest available chimneys 

 were all tenanted by swallows, these "shut out" birds 

 were forced to seek some available locality in a tree or 

 crevice of a rock, or else quit the neighborhood. Ac- 



