40 BARN SWALLOW. 



son, 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 pub- 

 lic feeling is universally in their favour, they are seldom or never 

 disturbed. The proprietor of the barn last mentioned, 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 as- 

 sent. When the tenets of superstition " lean to the side of huma- 

 nity'^ one can readily respect them. On the west side of the Al- 

 leghany these birds become more rare. In travelling through the 

 states of Kentucky and Tennesee, from Lexington to the Tennesee 

 river, in the months of April and May, I did not see a single indi- 

 vidual of this species ; tho the Purple Martin, and, in some places, 

 the Bank Swallow was numerous. 



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

 ture of the nest it is nearly a week before it is completely finished. 

 One of these nests, taken on the twenty-first of June from the rafter 

 to which it was closely attached, is now lying before me. It is in 

 the form of an inverted cone with a perpendicular section cut oflF 

 on that side by which it adhered to the wood. At the top it has 

 an extension of the edge, or offset, for the male or female to sit on 

 occasionally, as appeared by the dung; the upper diameter was 

 about six inches by five, the height externally seven inches. This 

 shell is formed of mud, mixed with fine hay as plaisterers do their 

 mortar with hair, to make it adhere the better; the mud seems to 

 have been placed in regular strata, or layers, from side to side ; the 

 hollow of this cone (the shell of which is about an inch in thick- 

 ness) is filled with fine hay, well stuffed in ; above that is laid a 



