SWALLOW. 118 



as before remarked, are so often built in with us. Tim* 

 Gilbert White says, in his 'Natural History of Selborne,' that 

 'in general with us, this Hirundo breeds in chimneys; and 

 loves to haunt those stacks where there is a constant fire, no 

 doubt for the sake of the warmth; not that it can subsist 

 in the immediate shaft where there is a fire, but prefers one 

 adj< uning to that of the kitchen, and disregards the perpetual 

 smoke of the funnel, as I have often observed with some 

 degree of wonder.' 



Yarrell mentions one which was lodged in the half-open 

 drawer of a table in an unoccupied garret, to which access 

 was obtainable through a broken pane of glass; and in the 

 Museum of the late Sir Ashton Lever, one was preserved 

 which had been attached to the body and wing of a defunct 

 Owl, which had been nailed against a barn. Sir John 

 Trevelyan, Bart, wrote to Bewick, 'At Camerton Hall, near 

 Bath, a pair of Swallows built their nest on the upper part 

 of the frame of an old picture over the chimney, coming 

 through a broken pane in the* window of the room. They 

 came three years successively, and in all probability would 

 have continued to do so if the room had not been put in 

 repair, which prevented their access to it.' Yarrell mentions 

 the nest of one pair which was built on the bough of a 

 sycamore hanging low over a pond, at the Moat, Penshurst, 

 in Kent, in the summer of 1832. Two sets of eggs were 

 laid in it. The first brood was reared, but the second died 

 'unfledged. 



AV. Thompson, Esq., of Belfast, mentions one or two peculiar 

 instances of the nidification of the Swallow, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Belfast: 'A pair of these birds built their nest 

 in a house, although the door, by which alone they could 

 enter, was locked every evening, and not opened before six 

 o'clock the next morning; so that being early risers they 

 thus lost, for no inconsiderable part of the season, fully three 

 hours every day.' A similar fact is mentioned in Captain 

 Cook's 'Sketches in Spain,' where it is stated that in the 

 southern provinces the Swallows live in the posadas, their 

 iK-sts being built on the rafters where they are shut up 

 very night. In the 'Northern AVhig,' a Belfast paper of 

 .July the 2nd., 1S29, the following paragraph appeared: 'AVe 

 understand that a pair of Swallows have built their nest in 

 Air. Getty's schoolroom at Randalstown; and, notwithstanding 

 there are above forty scholars daily attending, the birds 



