Coues on the Earn, Cliff, or Crescent Swallow. 107 
more.” Nevertheless, these accounts are interesting, and all have 
their bearing on the natural history of this remarkable bird. It 
was unknown to Wilson. In 1817, between Audubon’s times of 
observation in Kentucky, Clinton says he first saw Eave Swallows 
at Whitehall, New York, at the southern end of Lake Champlain. 
Zadock Thompson found them at Randolph, Vt., about the same 
time. Mr. G. A. Boardman tells me that they were no novelty at 
St. Stephens, New Brunswick, in 1828. Dr. Brewer received their 
eggs from Coventry, Vt., in 1837, when they were new to him ; 
but the date of their appearance there was not determined. They 
are said by the same writer to have appeared at Jatfrey, N. H., in 
1838; at Carlisle, Pa., in 1841 ; and the appearance of a large 
colony which he observed at Attleborough, Mass., in 1842, in- 
dicated that they had been there for several years. During the 
last-mentioned year they were present, apparently for the first 
time, in Boston and neighboring metastatic foci of the globe. The 
record also teaches that these birds do not necessarily change from 
“Cliff” to “Eave” Swallows in the East, for in 1861 Professor 
Verrill discovered a large colony breeding on limestone cliffs of An- 
ticosti, remote from man, and in their primitive fashion. That the 
settlement of the country has conduced to the general dispersion 
of the birds during the breeding season in places that knew him 
not before, is undoubted ; but that any general eastward migration 
ever occurred, or that there has been in recent times a progressive 
spread of the birds across successive meridians, is less than doubt- 
ful, — is almost disproven. Birds that can fly like Swallows, and 
go from South America to the Arctic Ocean, are not likely to cut 
around vid the Mississippi or the Rocky Mountains, houses or no 
houses. Moreover, the scarcity or apparent absence of these birds 
in the Southern States, or most portions thereof, may be simply 
due to the ineligibility of the country, and only true for a part of 
the year. It cannot be that the breeding birds of Pennsylvania, 
New York, and New England come and go by other than a direct 
route ; and if not detected in the Southern States, it must be be- 
cause they fly over the country in their migrations, and do not stop 
to breed. It is authenticated that they nest at least as far south 
as Washington, D. C., where Drs. Coues and Prentiss found them 
some twenty years ago to be summer residents, arriving late in 
April and remaining until the middle of September, though they 
were not as abundant as some of the other swallows. 
