330 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 



of man are few and far between, it inhabits caves, particularly in the limestone 

 rocks ; and it also frequents the outhouses at the trading-posts. When Fort 

 Franklin was erected, on the shores of Great Bear Lake, in the autumn of 1825, 

 we found many of its nests in the ruins of a house that had been abandoned for 

 more than ten years. Towards the end of the following May, the birds them- 

 selves made their appearance, and immediately commenced a survey of the 

 different buildings ; but the storehouses having been repaired, without any refer- 

 ence to the poor Swallows, they found no entrance ; and after lingering about 

 their old haunts for a week, they flew off in search of other quarters. At Fort 

 Chepewyan, lat. 57°, the Barn Swallows have regularly, about the 15th of May, 

 for a number of years, taken possession of their nests of mud and straw, con- 

 structed within an outhouse, and we observed numbers of them in the same month 

 at Fort Good Hope (in lat. 67^°), the most northerly post in America. The eggs 

 are marked with spots and minute streaks of yellowish-brown on a white ground. 

 After rearing a single brood, they quit these high latitudes early in August, the 

 supply of food then becoming precarious ; and about the middle of that month 

 they begin to prepare for their departure, even from Pennsylvania, though they 

 do not entirely disappear till the middle of September. Their arrival in Penn- 

 sylvania being nearly two months earlier than within the Arctic circle, they are 

 enabled to rear two broods. 



DESCRIPTION 



Of a male, killed at Fort Chepewyan in June, 1827- 



Colour. — Forehead, throat, and upper part of the breast pale chestnut; rest of the under 

 plumage yellowish-brown. Top of the head and neck, dorsal plumage, lesser coverts, and 

 sides of the breast, deeply glossed with violet-purple ; the base of the plumage of these parts 

 being grey, the middle greyish-white, and pitch-black next the purple tips. Quills, greater 

 coverts, and tail blackish-brown, with dark green reflexions : all the tail feathers but the 

 central pair having a large white spot on the middle of their inner webs. Bill black. Irides 

 dark brown. Legs blackish-purple. 



Form typical. Bill rather weaker and more depressed than that of H. lunifrons. Tail 

 deeply forked; the lateral pair of feathers prolonged. 



and a half long (French measure ?) ; ours is fully seven : the front is whitish (le front blanchatre) ; ours is very deep 

 rufous. But the most remarkable difference between the two birds is in the construction of their nests : the Cayenne 

 bird building one without mud, and so long as sometimes to measure a foot and a half, with an opening near the bottom — 

 the Americana of Wilson, on the contrary, using a good deal of mud ; the length is only seven inches, and the 

 opening at top, with an external rim, for the parents occasionally to sit upon. (See Wilson, v., p. 40, and Sonnini's 

 Buffon, xix , p. 35.) Until this matter is further investigated, we cannot suppose that individuals of the same species 

 would, in different countries, build their nests in such very dissimilar ways. — Sw. 



