52 



CHIMNEY SWALLOW 



Swallows] find security in the mud at the bottom of lakes, rivers, 

 and ponds/^ yet I cannot in the cases just cited see any sufficient 

 cause for such a belief. The birds were seen to pass out on the 

 first of May or in the spring when the leaves began to appear on 

 the trees, and about the middle of September they were seen en- 

 tering the tree for the last time; but there is no information here 

 of their being seen at any time during winter either within or 

 around the tree. This most important part of the matter is taken 

 for granted without the least examination, and as will be presently 

 shewn, without foundation. I shall, I think, also prove that if these 

 trees had been cut down in the depth of winter not a single Swal- 

 low would have been found either in a living or a torpid state ! And 

 that this was merely a place of rendezvous for active living birds is 

 evident from the " immense quantity of excrements" found within 

 it, which birds in a state of torpidity are not supposed to produce. 

 The total absence of the relics of nests is a proof that it was not 

 a breeding place, and that the whole was nothing more than one of 

 those places to which this singular bird resorts, immediately on 

 its arrival in May, in which also many of the males continue to 

 roost during the whole summer, and from which they regularly de- 

 part about the middle of September. From other circumstances 

 it appears probable that some of these trees have been for ages the 

 summer rendezvous or general roosting place of the whole Chim- 

 ney Swallows of an extensive district. Of this sort I conceive the 

 following to be one which is thus described by a late traveller to 

 the westward. 



Speaking of the curiosities of the state of Ohio the writer ob- 

 serves, " In connection with this I may mention a large collection 

 of feathers found within a hollow tree which I examined with the 

 Rev. Mr. Story, May 18th, 1803. It is in the upper part of Water- 

 ford, about two miles distant from the Muskingum. A very large 

 sycamore, which through age had decayed and fallen down, con- 

 tained in its hollow trunk, five and a half feet in diameter, and for 



