48 



CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 

 HIBUNDO PELASGIA. 

 [Plate XXXIX.— Fig. 1.] 



Lath. Syn. Yyp. 583 — 32. — Catesb. Car. App. t. 8. — Hirondeile de la Caroline, Buff. 

 VI, />. 700. — Hirundo Carolinensis, Briss. II, />. 501. 9. — Aculeated Swallow, ArcU Zool. 

 II, JVo, 335— -18.— TuRT. Si/st. p, 630.— Peale's Museum, JVo, 7663. 



THIS species is peculiarly our own; and strongly distinguish- 

 ed from all the rest of our Swallows by its figure, flight, and man- 

 ners. Of the first of these the representation in the plate will give 

 a correct idea; its other peculiarities shall be detailed as fully as 

 the nature of the subject requires. 



This Swallow, like all the rest of its tribe in the United States, 

 is migratory, arriving in Pennsylvania late in April or early in May, 

 and dispersing themselves over the whole country wherever there 

 are vacant chimneys in summer suflSciently high and convenient 

 for their accommodation. In no other situation with us are thev 

 observed at present to build. This circumstance naturally suggests 

 the query. Where did these birds construct their nests before the 

 arrival of Europeans in this country, when there were no such 

 places for their accommodation.? I would answer probably in the 

 same situations in which they still continue to build in the remote 

 regions of our western forests, where European improvements of 

 this kind are scarcely to be found, namely in the hollow of a tree, 

 which in some cases has the nearest resemblance to their present 

 choice of any other. One of the first settlers in the state of Kentucky 

 informed me, that he cut down a large hollow beech tree which con- 

 tained forty or fifty nests of the Chimney Swallow, most of which 

 by the fall of the tree, or by the weather, were lying at the bottom 



