216 
PURPLE MARTIN. 
color above as the back ; tips of the wings dusky ; tongue very short, 
truncate, and ending in three or four sharp points. The female cannot 
be distinguished from the male by her plumage, unless in its being some- 
thing duller, for both are equally marked with reddish orange on the sides 
under the wings, which some foreigners have made the distinguishing 
mark of the male alone. 
The nest is built in a hollow tree, the cavity often dug by itself; the 
female begins to lay early in May ; the eggs are usually six, pure white, 
with a few very small specks of red near the great end. The whole 
family, in the month of July, hunt together, the parents keeping up a 
continual chatter, as if haranguing and directing their inexperienced 
brood. 
Genus XLVI. HIRUNDO. SWALLOW. 
Species I. H. PURPUREA. 
PURPLE MARTIN. 
[Plate XXXIX. Fig. 1, Male. Fig. 2, Female.] 
Lath. Syn. iv., p. 574, 21. Ibid, iv., p. 575, 23. — Catesb. Car. i., 51. — Arct. Zool. 
ii., No. 333. — Hirondelle bleue de la Caroline. Buff, vi., p. 674. PI. Enl. 722. — 
Le Martinet couleur de pourpre, Buff, vi., p. 676. — Turt. Syst. 629. — Edw. 120. — 
Hirundo subis, Lath, iv., p. 575-24.* 
This Avell known bird is a general inhabitant of the United States, 
and a particular favorite wherever he takes up his abode. I never met 
with more than one man who disliked the Martins and would not permit 
them to settle about his house. This was a penurious close-fisted Ger- 
man, who hated them because, as he said, " they eat his peas." I told him 
he must certainly be mistaken, as I never knew an instance of Martins 
eating peas ; but he replied with coolness that he had many times seen 
them himself "blaying near the hife, and going schnip, sohnap," by 
which I understood that it was his bees that had been the sufferers ; and 
the charge could not be denied. 
This sociable and half domesticated bird arrives in the southern fron- 
tiers of the United States late in February or early in March ; reaches 
Pennsylvania about the first of April, and extends his migrations as far 
north as the country round Hudson's Bay, where he is first seen in 
May, and disappears in August ; so, according to the doctrine of torpid- 
* We add the following synonymes : — Hirundo purpurea, Linn. Syst. i., p. 344. 
— Gmel. Syst. i., p. 1020. — Hirundo ccei*ulea, Vieill. Ois. de V Am. Sept. pi. 25, 
male ; pi. 27, female. 
