178 THE REPUBLICAN OR CLIFF SWALLOW. 



t 



the heat of the sun was necessary to dry and harden their moist tenements. 

 They then ceased from labour for a few hours, amused themselves by per- 

 forming aerial evolutions, courted and caressed their mates with much affec- 

 tion, and snapped at flies and other insects on the wing. They often exam- 

 ined their nests to see if they were sufficiently dry, and as soon as these ap- 

 peared to have acquired the requisite firmness, they renewed their labours. 

 Until the females began to sit, they all roosted in the hollow limbs of the 

 sycamores (Platanus Occident a lis) growing on the banks of the Licking 

 River, but when incubation commenced, the males alone resorted to the trees. 

 A second party arrived, and were so hard pressed for time, that they betook 

 themselves to the holes in the wall, where bricks had been left out for the 

 scaffolding. These they fitted with projecting necks, similar to those of the 

 complete nests of the others. Their eggs were deposited on a few bits of 

 straw, and great caution was necessary in attempting to procure them, as the 

 slightest touch crumbled their frail tenement into dust. By means of a table- 

 spoon, I was enabled to procure many of them. Each nest contained four 

 eggs, which were white, with dusky spots. Only one brood is raised in a 

 season. The energy with which they defended their nests was truly asto- 

 nishing. Although I had taken the precaution to visit them at sun-set, when 

 I supposed they would all have been at rest, yet a single female happening 

 to give the alarm, immediately called out the whole tribe. They snapped at 

 my hat, body and legs, passed between me and the nests, within an inch of 

 my face, twittering their rage and sorrow. They continued their attacks as 

 I descended, and accompanied me for some distance. Their note may be 

 perfectly imitated by rubbing a cork damped with spirit against the neck of 

 a bottle. 



A third party arrived a few days after, and immediately commenced build- 

 ing. In one week they had completed their operations, and at the end of 

 that time thirty nests hung clustered like so many gourds, each having a 

 neck two inches long. On the 27th July, the young were able to follow 

 their parents. They all exhibited the white frontlet, and were scarcely dis- 

 tinguishable in any part of their plumage from the old birds. On the 1st of 

 August, they all assembled near their nests, mounted some three hundred 

 feet in the air, and about 10 o'clock in the morning took their departure, 

 flying in a loose body, in a direction due north. They returned 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 disappeared. Shortly after their 

 departure, I was informed that several hundreds of their nests were attached 

 to the court-house at the mouth of the Kentucky river. They had com- 

 menced building them in 1815. A person likewise informed me, that, along 



