134 



BARN SWALLOW. 



river St Lawrence. On the east side of the great range of 

 the Alleghany, they are dispersed very generally over the 

 country, wherever there are habitations, even to the summit 

 of high mountains; but, on account of the greater coldness 

 of such situations, are usually a week or two later in 

 making their appearance there. On the 16th of May, being 

 on a shooting expedition on the top of Pocano Mountain, 

 Northampton, when the ice on that and on several successive 

 mornings was more than a quarter of an inch thick, I 

 observed with surprise a pair of these swallows which had 

 taken up their abode on a miserable cabin there. It was then 

 about sunrise, the ground white with hoar frost, and the male 

 was twittering on the roof by the side of his mate with great 

 sprightliness. The man of the house told me that a single 

 pair came regularly there every season, and built their nest 

 on a projecting beam under the eaves, about six or seven feet 

 from the ground. At the bottom of the mountain, in a large 

 barn belonging to the tavern there, I counted upwards of 

 twenty nests, all seemingly occupied. In the woods they are 

 never met with ; but, as you approach a farm, they soon catch 

 the eye, cutting their gambols in the air. Scarcely a barn, 

 to which these birds can find access, is without them ; and, as 

 public feeling is universally in their favour, they are seldom 

 or never disturbed. The proprietor of the barn last men- 

 lioned, a German, assured me that if a man permitted the 

 swallows to be shot, his cows would give bloody milk, and 

 also that no barn where swallows frequented would ever be 

 struck with lightning; and I nodded assent. When the 

 tenets of superstition "lean to the side of humanity," one 

 can readily respect them. On the west side of the Alleghany 

 these birds become more rare. In travelling through the 

 States of Kentucky and Tennessee, from Lexington to the 

 Tennessee river, in the months of April and May, I did not see 

 a single individual of this species; though the purple martin, 

 and, in some places, the bank swallow, was numerous. 



Early in May they begin to build. From the size and 



