REPUBLICAN OR CLIFF SWALLOW. 355 



about three hundred feet in the air, and at ten in the morning took their 

 departure, flying in a loose body, in a direction dvie north. They re- 

 turned the same evening about dusk, and continued these excursions, no 

 doubt to exercise their powers, until the third, when, uttering a farewell 

 cry, they shaped the same course at the same hour, and finally disap- 

 peared. Shortly after their departure, I was informed that several hun- 

 dreds of their nests were attached to the Court-House at the mouth of 

 the Kentucky River. They had commenced building them in 1815. A 

 person Hkewise informed me, that, along the cliffs of the Kentucky, he 

 had seen many hunches, as he termed them, of these nests attached to the 

 naked shelving rocks overhanging that river. 



Being extremely desirous of settling the long-agitated question re- 

 specting the migration or supposed torpidity of Swallows, I embraced 

 every opportunity of examining their habits, carefully noted their arrival 

 and disappearance, and recorded every fact connected with their history. 

 After some years of constant observation and reflection, I remarked that 

 among all the species of migratory birds, those that remove farthest from 

 us, depart sooner than those which retire only to the confines of the 

 United States ; and, by a parity of reasoning, those that remain later re- 

 turn earlier in the spring. These remarks were confirmed, as I advanced 

 towards the south-west on the approach of winter, for I there found num- 

 bers of Warblers, Thrushes, &c. in full feather and song. It was also 

 remarked that the Hirundo viridis of Wilson (called by the French of 

 Lower Louisiana, Le Petit Martinet a ventre blanc) remained about the 

 City of New Orleans later than any other Swallow. As immense num- 

 bers of them were seen during the month of November, I kept a diary of 

 the temperature from the third of that month, until the arrival of Hirundo 

 purpurea. The following notes are taken from my journal, and as I had 

 excellent opportunities, during a residence of many years in that country, of 

 visiting the lakes to which these Swallows were said to resort, during the 

 transient frosts, I present them with confidence. 



November 11. — Weather very sharp, with a heavy white frost. 

 Swallows in abundance during the whole day. On inquiring of the in- 

 habitants if this was a usual occurrence, I Avas answered in the affirma- 

 tive by all the French and Spaniards. From this date to the 22d, the 

 thermometer averaged 65°, the weather generally a drizzly fog. Swallows 

 playing over the city in thousands. 



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