14 



summer; and wlieu after a long, frost-bound, and boisterous winter we hear it 

 announced that " the SAvallows are come," what a train of charming ideas are associated 

 with the simple tidings.' But almost all the written history of the bird has the savour 

 of home: we think of Swallows and the city street, the farmyard, the bursting barn,- 

 the new-mown hay, the flocks and herds, and all the changes of the seasons that come 

 to us w'hen comfortably housed — forgetting, perhaps, the trackless waste of the West, 

 where Swallows are still as wild and primitive as any birds, bounden by no human ties 

 and no associates of civilization. Let us see the Swallow as he was before there were 

 houses in this country — as he still remains in some parts of the world ; we shall find 

 him living in caverns, like the primitive cave-dwellers of our race ; in holes in the 

 ground, like the foxes of Scripture ; in hollow trees, like the hamadryads of mythology 

 — so lowly is the habitation of this winged messenger of the changeful seasons. And 

 yet, no sooner does the sound of the woodman's axe in the clearing foretell the new day, 

 than the twitter of the Swallow responds like the echo, and the glad bird hastens to fold 

 his wings beneath a sheltering roof. 



" Along the parallel of 49° I occasionally observed Barn-Swallows at various places 

 from the Red E,iver of the North to the Bocky Mountains, during July and August 

 of 1873-74. Excepting at Pembina, Dakota, where, however, I do not think that any 

 of these Swallows were breeding among the numbers of Eave and White-bellied Swallows 

 that I saw during my visit, there were no human habitations for the birds to occupy ; and 

 as eligible breeding-places were few and far between, Barn-Swallows were comparatively 

 rare. A small colony which had settled along the stream near Sweetgrass Hills gave 

 the opportunity of observing one of the many modifications of their breeding-habits. 

 Here the nests were built on the ground, in little holes and crevasses in the perpen- 

 dicular face of a cut-bank. I could not satisfy myself that the holes were dug by the 

 birds, though my assistant thought so ; but they were pi^obably refitted for the reception 

 of the nests. 



" PJdgway found it most abundant about Pyramid Lake, Nevada, where it nested 

 among the tufa-domes, each nest being attached to the ceiling of a cave among the 

 rocks, and each cave having generally but a single pair. He also found nests in caverns 

 of the limestone-cliffs on the eastern side of the Buby Mountains ; and others elsewhere, 

 attached, as usual, in the East, to rafters of buildings. These ' tufa-domes,' as described 

 by the same writer, are rocks of remarkable form and structure, usually having rounded 

 or domed tops, being thickly incrusted with calcareous tufa, and honey-combed beneath 

 with winding passages and deep grottoes, in which various birds nested, such as the Burion, 

 Say's Pewee, and the Barn-Swallow. Various other advices which we have from the 

 West, particularly from the Pacific coast, attest that this Swallow is primitively a 

 troglodyte, or cave-dweller; and even in the East we have similar evidence in the 

 ' Swallow Cave ' at Usliant, which Dr. Brewer mentions as once a favourite resort. In 

 thus rehearsing the nestings of the Barn-Swallow, aside from its now liabitual choice of 

 rafters, I may finally note that it sometimes takes forcible possession of the nests of 



