THE MARTIN. 207 



kiln was in use, though the smoke must have been a great annoy- 

 ance, if not a positive danger. A very curious situation for a nest 

 of this bird is given in Audubon's Orn. Biog., vol. v., on the 

 authority of Mr T. Durham Weir, who states that it was built in the 

 shaft of a coalpit in the parish of Bathgate, " at the astonishing 

 depth of fifteen fathoms." 



I have a Swallow in my collection which was shot near Glasgow 

 on 1st June, 1868, with the whole of the under parts of a deep 

 rufous tint, but not quite so intense as the colouring of the African 

 variety Savignyi. The specimen, however, shows that intermediate 

 stage which has prevented some ornithologists regarding the 

 Hirundo cahirica of Lichtenstein as anything more than a mere 

 variety. 



THE MARTIN. 



HIRUNDO URBICA. 



THE gentle and familiar Martlet is altogether wanting in the 

 Outer Hebrides. In Skye, Mull, and lona, however, it is common, 

 building its nest in the eaves of houses, and is, in the two last 

 named islands especially, much more common than the chimney- 

 swallow. 



Though the breeding haunts of this bird are now so intimately 

 associated with the habitations of man, there must have been a 

 time when the rude dwellings of pre-historic races forbade its 

 approach. Previous to the erection of houses with suitable windows, 

 indeed, the Martin was chiefly met with in the face of rocky 

 precipices, mostly fronting the sea. In such situations, bleak and 

 solitary, often far removed from cultivated places, and exposed to the 

 roughest storms, it is a highly interesting spectacle to see hundreds 

 of Martins issuing, as it were, from the rock itself their clay 

 habitations being quite invisible. I have examined many nurseries 

 of this kind in various parts of Scotland, and in several instances 

 have noticed the nests built inside the mouth of a cave, and wholly 

 inaccessible. Among the rocky habitats I have visited, I may 

 mention one in Berwickshire at Cove Bay, which is frequented by 

 a large colony of birds; one in Ayrshire at Currarie Port, near 

 Ballantrae; and a third in Argyleshire, near Oban. In July, 1868, 

 I saw eleven occupied nests of the Martin under the upper pro- 



