194 NATURAL HISTORY 



paths, for gravels to grind and digest its food. Before 

 they depart, for some weeks, to a bird, they forsake 

 houses and chimneys, and roost in trees ; and usually with- 

 draw about the beginning of October; though some few 

 stragglers may appear on at times till the first week in 

 November. 



Some few pairs haunt the new and open streets of 

 London next the fields, but do not enter, like the house 

 martin, the close and crowded parts of the city. 



Both male and female are distinguished from their con- 

 geners by the length and forkedness of their tails. They 

 are undoubtedly the most nimble of all the species; and 

 when the male pursues the female in amorous chase, they 

 then go beyond their usual speed, and exert a rapidity 

 almost too quick for the eye to follow. 



After this circumstantial detail of the life and discerning 

 a-Topyy of the swallow, I shall add, for your farther amuse- 

 ment, an anecdote or two not much in favour of her 

 sagacity : 



A certain swallow built for two years together on the 

 handles of a pair of garden shears, that were stuck up 

 against the boards in an outhouse, and therefore must have 

 her nest spoiled whenever that implement was wanted: 

 and, what is stranger still, another bird of the same species 

 built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that hap- 

 pened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of 

 a barn. This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with 

 eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity worthy the 

 most elegant private museum in Great Britain. The 

 owner, struck with the oddity of the sight, furnished the 

 bringer with a large shell, or conch, desiring him to fix it 

 just where the owl hung : the person did as he was ordered, 

 and the following year a pair, probably the same pair, built 

 their nest in the conch, and laid their eggs. 1 



The owl and the conch make a strange grotesque appear- 



1 This anecdote is related, almost in the same words, and evidently 

 originally from the same pen, in Barring ton's " Miscellanies," 

 p. 240. ED. 



