CHiETURA PELASGICA : CHIMNEY SWIFT. 



57 



cal walls of a chimney or hollow tree. In former times, 

 before the country was settled, the birds roosted and 

 builded in hollows of trees, to which they resorted in 

 thousands sometimes — a steady stream of the creatures 

 pouring in at dusk to pass the night. Some such trees 

 have become historic as "swallow-trees," frequented year 

 after year by countless numbers, till the bottom became 

 filled with a mass of debris. Now, like Swallows, they 

 have modified their primitive way, and almost always 

 choose to make their nests in chimneys, — whence their 

 name, — though too often exposed in such situations to 

 disaster by fire and flood ; 

 as when a soaking rain 

 loosens the mucilaginous 

 fastening of the nest, and 

 the whole comes tumbling 

 down. The " frying-pan " 

 out of which the little 

 birds sometimes fall "into 

 the fire," is one of the 

 most curious of all speci- 

 mens of bird architecture. It consists of a basket-work 

 of bits of twigs, glued together and to the side of the 

 chimney with the sticky saliva of the birds — the same 

 substance that in other cases, as those of the species of 

 the East Indian genus Collocalia, forms the famous 

 " edible bird's-nests" used for making soup by the celes- 

 tial heathens. The twigs are gathered in the most skil- 

 ful manner by the birds, who dash past the ends of 

 branches and snap off bits with the beak as quick as 

 thought. The completed basket has a semicircular brim, 

 and shallow cavity, in which are laid four or five pure 

 white, narrowly elliptical eggs, about 0.70 in length by 



Fig. 6. — Chimnev Swift, with 

 mucronate rectrix. 



