CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 
235 
rendezvous, as being usually more central, and less liable to interruption 
during the night. I might enumerate many places where this is their 
practice. Being in the town of Reading, Pennsylvania, in the month 
of August, I took notice of sixty or eighty of these birds, a little before 
evening, amusing themselves by ascending and descending the chimney 
of the court-house there. I was told that in the early part of summer ■ 
they were far more numerous at that particular spot. On the twentieth 
of May in returning from an excursion to the Great Pine Swamp, I 
spent part of the day in the town of Easton, where I was informed by 
my respected friend Mordecai Churchman, cashier of the bank there, 
and one of the people called Quakers, that the Chimney Swallows of 
Easton had selected the like situation ; and that from the windows of 
his house, which stands nearly opposite to the court-house, I might in 
an hour or two witness their whole manoeuvres. 
I accepted the invitation with pleasure. Accordingly a short time 
after sunset the Chimney Swallows, which were generally dispersed 
about town, began to collect around the court-house, their numbers 
every moment increasing, till, like motes in the sunbeams, the air seemed 
full of them. These while they mingled amongst each other seemingly 
in every direction, uttering their peculiar note with great sprightliness, 
kept a regular circuitous sweep around the top of the court-house, and 
about fourteen or fifteen feet above it, revolving with great rapidity for 
the space of atdeast ten minutes. There could not be less than four or 
five hundred of them. They now gradually varied their line of motion 
until one part of its circumference passed immediately over the chimney 
and about five or six feet above it. Some as they passed made a slight 
feint of entering, which was repeated by those immediately after, and 
by the whole circling multitude in succession ; in this feint they 
approached nearer and nearer at every revolution, dropping perpendicu- 
larly, but still passing over ; the circle meantime becoming more and 
more contracted, and the rapidity of its revolution greater as the dusk 
of evening increased, until at length one, and then another, dropped in, 
another and another followed, the circle still revolving until the whole 
multitude had descended except one or two. These flew oil" as if to 
collect the stragglers, and in a few seconds returned with six or eight 
more, which, after one or two rounds, dropped in one by one, and all 
was silence for the night. It seemed to me hardly possible that the 
internal surface of the vent could accommodate them all, without cluster- 
ing on one another, which I am informed they never do ; and I was very 
desirous of observing their ascension in the morning;, but having to set 
, off before day, I had not that gratification. Mr. Churchman, however, 
to whom I have since transmitted a few queries, has been so obliging as 
to inform me, that towards the beginning of June the number of those 
that regularly retired to the court-house to roost, was not more than 
