388 
HIRUNDINIM. 
1841, the swallow was seen as follows : — On descending the 
Rhone from Lyons to Avignon, some appeared on the 9th of 
April at several places, but were nowhere numerous. On the 
13th of that month, a very few were observed between Leghorn 
and Pisa. At Malta, on the 17th, they were as abundant as we 
ever behold them in the British islands. On the passage of 
H.M.S. Beacon, from Malta to the Morea, two swallows flew on 
board on the 22nd of April, when the vessel was about forty miles 
east of Malta ; on the 25th, when nearly fifty miles from Calabria, 
several appeared ; towards the evening of the next day, not less 
than a dozen alighted on the vessel, and after remaining all night, 
took their departure early on the morning of the 27th, when 
ninety miles west of the Morea : throughout the afternoon and 
towards the evening of the same day (at sunset we were about 
sixty miles from the Morea) many more arrived, and all that came 
having remained, they appeared towards the close of day flying 
around the ship in considerable numbers.* On our arrival at Nava- 
rino, on the 28th, the swallow was observed to be common, as it 
likewise was, in the following month, in the island of Syra, at 
Smyrna and Constantinople : in June, about the island of Paros, 
at Athens and Patras ; in July, at Venice, Verona, Milan, &c. 
At Trieste, where I spent ten days at the end of June, no swallows 
were observed, although house-martins and swifts were abundant; 
my not seeing them however, may have been accidental. When 
crossing the Splugen into Switzerland, on the 10th of July, 1841, 
swallows were seen flying about when we were at a great altitude. 
About none of the southern or eastern localities mentioned, nor 
in Holland, Prance, Switzerland, and Italy, are swallows, house- 
martins, sand-martins or swifts, more numerous, than in the north 
of Ireland, or the British islands generally. 
I never met with swallows more plentiful anywhere than they 
were on the 16th of May, flying over extremely rich lowly- 
situated pastures, in which some of the Sultan's stud were grazing, 
between Constantinople and the village of Belgrade. — On the 14th 
* In the brig “ Margaret Miller,” belonging to the port of Belfast, a swallow was 
taken in October, 1833, two hundred miles to the westward of Cape Clear, the most 
southern point of Ireland. 
