194 
NATURAL HISTORY 
paths, for gravels to grind and digest its food. Before 
they depart, for some weeks, to a bird, they forsake 
houses and chimneys, and roost in trees ; and usually with- 
draw about the beginning of October; though some few 
stragglers may appear on at times till the first week in 
November. 
Some few pairs haunt the new and open streets of 
London next the fields, but do not enter, like the house 
martin, the close and crowded parts of the city. 
Both male and female are distinguished from their con- 
geners by the length and forkedness of their tails. They 
are undoubtedly the most nimble of all the species; and 
when the male pursues the female in amorous chase, they 
then go beyond their usual speed, and exert a rapidity 
almost too quick for the eye to follow. 
After this circumstantial detail of the life and discerning 
(TTopy^ of the swallow, I shall add, for your farther amuse- 
ment, an anecdote or two not much in favour of her 
sagacity : — 
A certain swallow built for two years together on the 
handles of a pair of garden shears, that were stuck up 
against the boards in an outhouse, and therefore must have 
her nest spoiled whenever that implement was wanted : 
and, what is stranger still, another bird of the same species 
built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that hap- 
pened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of 
a barn. This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with 
eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity worthy the 
most elegant private museum in Great Britain. The 
owner, struck with the oddity of the sight, furnished the 
bringer with a large shell, or conch, desiring him to fix it 
just where the owl hung : the person did as he was ordered, 
and the following year a pair, probably the same pair, built 
their nest in the conch, and laid their eggs.^ 
The owl and the conch make a strange grotesque appear- 
^ This anecdote is related, almost in the same words, and evidently 
originally from the tsame pen, in Barrington's " Miscellanies," 
p. 240.— Ed. 
