NATURAL HISTOEY OF SELBOftNE. 
123 
years observation.* Not but now and then a straggler is seen* much 
earlier : and, in particular, when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a 
whole day together on a sunny warm Shrove Tuesday ; which day could 
not fall out later than the middle of March^ and often happened early 
in February. 
It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes and 
mill-ponds ; and it is also very particular, that if these early visitors 
happen to find frost and snow, as was the case of the two dreadful 
springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for a time. 
A circumstance this much more in favour of hiding than migration ; 
since it is much more probable that a bird should retire to its hyberna- 
culum just at hand, than return for a week or two to warmer latitudes. 
The swallow, though called the chimney-swallow, by no means builds 
altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and out-houses against , 
the rafters ; and so she did in Yirgil's time : 1 
. . . . "Antb 
Garrula qukm tignis nidos suspendat hirundo. " 
In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called ladu swala, the barn 
swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are no chimneys 
to houses, except they are English-built : in these countries she constructs 
her nest in porches, and gateways, and galleries, and open halls. 
Here and there a bird may affect some odd, peculiar place ; as we 
have known a swallow build down the shaft of an old well, through 
which chalk had been formerly drawn up for the purpose of manure : 
but in general with us this hirundo breeds in chimneys ; and loves to 
haunt those stacks where there is a constant fire, no doubt for the sake 
of warmth. Not that it can subsist in the immediate shaft where there 
is a fire ; but prefers one adjoining to that of the kitchen, and disregards 
the perpetual smoke of that funnel, as I have often observed with 
some degree of wonder. 
Five or six or more feet down the chimney does this little bird begin 
to form her nest about the middle of May, which consists, like that of the 
house-martin, of a crust or shell composed of dirt or mud, mixed with 
short pieces of straw to render it tough and permanent; with this 
difference, that whereas the shell of the martin is nearly hemispheric, 
that of the swallow is open at the top, and like half a deep dish : this 
nest is lined with fine grasses, and feathers, which are often collected as 
they float in the air. 
Wonderful is the address which this adroit bird shows all day long in 
ascending and descending with security through so narrow a pass. 
When hovering over the mouth of the funnel, the vibrations of her 
wings acting on the confined air occasion a rumbling like thunder. It 
is not improbable that the dam submits to this inconvenient situation 
so low in the shaft, in order to secure her broods from rapacious birds, 
* Hirundo riparia, or bank-swallow, we have for many years observed to 
precede the chimney-swallow by from seven to ten days. The breeding places 
of the chimney swallow mentioned afterwards are all artificial, and of these the 
rafters of outhouses are the most frequent. "We are not acquamted with any 
natural breeding-place of this species, it is most probably in caverns or cleft rocks. 
