33 2 ALLEN’S NATURALIST’S LIBRARY. 
Adult Male.— Above glossy purplish blue-black, the wings 
and tail blackish, with a slight gloss of green externally ; head 
like the back ; the forehead deep rufous ; ear-coverts purplish- 
blue ; cheeks and throat deep rufous ; the rest of the under 
surface pale rufous-buff ; on the fore-neck a collar of purplish- 
blue j bill and feet black; iris dark brown. Total length, 
7 '3 inches; cuhnen, 0^5 ; wing, 5-05; tail, 4-0; tarsus, 0-5. 
Adult Female.— Differs from the adult" only in having the 
outer tail-feathers rather shorter, and in not being so rufescent 
underneath. Total length, 6 - 6 inches; wing, 4'65. 
Young.— Duller than the adults, and not so glossy; the 
rufous frontal mark much smaller; many of the wing-coverts 
and the feathers of the lesser rump and upper tail-coverts with 
rufescent edges. 
Range in Great Britain. — A regular summer visitor to every 
part of our islands, but breeding less frequently in the north. 
Range outside the British Islands. — * Found universally over 
Europe, even to the high north. It breeds as far as the Yenesei 
Valley, and in a few places in the Himalayas, being replaced 
in China and the far east by an allied species of Swallow 
Hinmdo gutturalis. Both species winter in the south H. 
rustica in Africa and India, a few further east still the 
winter ranges of the two Chimney-Swallows overlap, 
as H. gutturalis winters in Southern China, the Moluccas' 
the Burmese and Malayan countries, and the eastern portion 
of the Indian Peninsula. 
Habits.—' The ways of the Chimney-Swallow have been often 
described and are known to every one, the bird’s graceful 
flight being observed in the open fields, and, more rarely, in 
the neighbourhood of towns, where, however, they often build 
in the chimneys of old buildings. Mr. Edward Bartlett has 
related how he discovered Swallows’ nests with young birds 
eiaht feet down a narrow shaft of a chimney in an old 
Elizabethan mansion at Maidstone. All kinds of other situa- 
tions are chosen by the bird for its nest : this being sometimes 
on a beam in a shed, and at others in places of the most 
eccentric description, such as on the china shade over an 
electric lamp in a stable, etc. 
