60 
RURAL HOURS. 
barn-yard, we asked a boy if there were any martins there. 
" Martins ?" he inquired, looking puzzled. " No, marm ; I never 
heard tell of such birds hereabouts." The same question was 
very often asked, and only, in two or three instances, received a 
different answer; some elderly persons replying that formerly 
there certainly were martins here. At length, however, we dis- 
covered a few, found their abode, and observed them coming and 
going, and a little later, we saw others on a farm about two miles 
from the village ; still, their numbers must be very small when 
compared with the other varieties which everybody knows, and 
which are almost constantly in sight through the warm weather. 
It is possible that the flock may have been diminished, of late 
years, by some accidental cause ; but such, at least, is the state 
of things just now. 
The pretty little bank-swallow, another very common and nu- 
merous tribe, is entirely a stranger here, though found on the 
banks of lakes and rivers at no great distance ; we have seen 
them, indeed, in large flocks, among the sand-hills near the Sus- 
quehanna, just beyond the southern borders of the county. This 
is the only swallow common to both hemispheres, and it is of this 
bird that M. de Chateaubriand remarks he had found it every- 
where, in all his wanderings over Asia, Africa, Europe, and 
America, 
That the chff-swallow should also be a stranger here, is not at 
all remarkable ; a few years since, there were none east of the 
Mississippi. In 1824, a single pair first appeared within the 
limits of New York, at a tavern near Whitehall, a short distance 
from Lake Champlain ; shortly after Gov. De Witt Clinton intro- 
duced them to the world at large by writing a notice of them ; 
