CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 359 
all winter in these recesses. I have searched hundreds of these holes 
in the months of December and January, but never found a single 
Swallow, dead, living, or torpid. I met with this bird in considerable 
numbers on the shores of the Kentucky river, between Lexington and 
Danville. They likewise visit the sea-shore, in great numbers, previ- 
ous to their departure, which continues from the last of September to 
the middle of October. 
The Bank Swallow is five inches long, and ten inches in extent; 
upper parts, mouse colored, lower, white, with a band of dusky brown- 
ish across the upper part of the breast ; tail, forked, the exterior feather 
slightly edged with whitish; lores and bill, black; legs, with a few 
tufts of downy feathers behind; claws, fine-pointed, and very sharp; 
over the eye, a streak of whitish; lower side of the shafts, white ; 
wings and tail, darker than the body. The female differs very little 
from the male. 
This bird appears to be in nothing different from the European 
species ; from which circumstance, and its early arrival here, I would 
conjecture that it passes to a high northern latitude on both continents. 
CHIMNEY SWALLOW. — HIRUNDO PELASGIA.— Fie. 166 
Lath. Syn. v. p. 583, 32. — Catesh. Car. App. t. 8. — Hirondelle de la Caroline, 
Buff. vi. p. 700.— Hirundo Carolinensis, Briss. ii. p. 501, 9.—Aculeated 
Swallow, Arct. Zool. ii. No. 335, 18. — Turt. Syst. p. 630.— Peale’s Museum, 
No. 7663. 
CHETURA PELASGIA,—SteruEens.* 
Cheetura pelasgia, Steph. Cert. Sh. Zool. Sup. p. 76.—Cypselus pelasgius, 
Bonap. Synop. p. 63. 
Tus species is peculiarly our own, and strongly distinguished from 
all the rest of our Swallows by its figure, flight, and manners. Of the 
first of these, the representation in Fig. 166 will give a correct idea; 
its‘ other peculiarities shall be detailed as fully as the nature of the 
subject requires. 
This species has been taken as the type of Mr. Stephens’s genus Chetura. In 
form they resemble the Swifts, and the first observed distinction will be the struc- 
ture of the tail, where the quills of the feathers are elongated, and run to a sharp or 
subulated point. The bill is more compressed laterally ; the legs and feet possess 
peta muscularity ; the toes alone are scaled, and the tarsi are covered with a 
naked skin, through which the form of the muscles is plainly visible; the claws are 
much hooked. All these provisions are necessary to their mode of life. Without 
some strong support, they could not cling for a great length of time in the hollows 
of trees, or in chimneys ; and their tails are used, in the manner of a Woodpecker, 
to assist the power of the strong feet. They present, in a beautiful manner, the 
scansorial form among the Fissirostres; one species, the Ch. senex, (Cypselus 
senex, Temm.,) even feeds in the manner of the true Climbers, running up the steep 
rocks, assisted by its tail, in search of food. 
The group will contain a considerable number. We have them from India, 
North and South America, and New Holland ; but I am not aware that Africa has 
yet produced any species. — Ep. 
