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as rough as cobble- work. If, as frequently happens, eggs are laid before the whole 

 structure is completed, the female drops her labour, and the male finishes the dwelling. 

 This business is said to occupy them six days ; no doubt the time required varies, 

 depending on the w r eather, and is often much less. They show extreme persistence. 

 You may pull down their nests many times before they will abandon a chosen site, and 

 they love to return to the same spot year after year. 



" That the mud out of which the shells are composed owes its adhesiveness to a 

 sticky saliva with which it is mixed, I do not believe to be true to any noteworthy extent. 

 Although in their globular shape and position they will resist a winter's storm, if once 

 lowered from their fastenings, or cracked, they crumble very easily. Lining, properly 

 speaking, there is none ; but the eggs repose on a more or less scanty pallet of straw and 

 feathers, with wool, fur, &c, in proportion to the coldness of the climate. 



" Where the nests are simply plastered on the outside of a barn, underneath the pro- 

 jecting eaves, as is common, the aboriginal shape is well preserved, and you cannot 

 reach the eggs without breaking away the bottle-neck entrance ; but if the Swallows 

 have learned enough to go inside, or wherever they find some snug corner, their labour 

 is lessened, and a structure results that owes its shape to its position, and hence may be 

 widely abnormal, lacking perhaps the narrow neck, or, if adequately sheltered, the 

 whole dome, and assuming simply a hemispherical bowl form, like the lower half of the 

 original retort. This is very likely to be almost wdiolly the shape seen in long-settled 

 districts. 



" The Cliff- Swallows appear to be irregular in their laying. Many records show 

 that large embryos will be found in some nests of a colony where other birds were just 

 completing their houses or had laid the first egg. The Swallow villages are thus 

 populous and busy from the first return of their denizens until the September migration, 

 when many helpless fledglings and useless eggs are always left behind. Two broods are 

 generally safely raised, nevertheless. 



" The ordinary clutch is from four to six eggs. When a larger number occurs, it is 

 attributed to the laying of two females in the same nest— a thing very likely to occur 

 now and then among birds so communistic in their notions ; but I have no proof of it. 

 The colour of the egg is dull wdiite, peppered with infinitesimal points of red, and (on the. 

 big end) marked with blotches of dead clay-brown, others of a deep wine colour and 

 fainter suffusions of purple. But the patterns are very variable, and often closely 

 approach those of their neighbours, the Barn-Swallows (Hirundo liorreorum). 



" In sitting, the female is said to be occasionally relieved by the male. But for the 

 most part he busies himself in getting food, and in bravely and vengef ully guarding his 

 home, the whole fightiDg strength of the community mustering at his alarm to repel 

 some real or fancied enemy with a courage which, if its power equalled its fury, would 

 be irresistible." 



Mr. F. II. Knowlton, writing in 1881 from Brandon, Vermont, gives some interesting 

 information respecting the habits of the present species : — 



2z 2 



