282 Passeres. BIRDS. Cypselid.®;. 
nest till the end of July. During all this period the 
parents attend to and feed them with great care, supply- 
ing them with abundance of food, although they allow 
rather longer intervals to elapse between their visits to 
the nest, than is usual with birds when bringing up 
their young. After the young birds have come out, 
they receive little attention from their parents, but 
are left pretty much to shift for themselves ; this, how- 
ever, they are well able to do, and, indeed, within a 
very short time after their first initiation into the cares 
and perils of the outer world, they are strong enough 
to undertake a long journey into unknown regions. It 
sometimes happens that the first eggs are destroyed by 
some accident; and in this case, the Swifts lay a second 
time. Some curious examples of this have been re- 
corded. Gilbert White, writing in 1781, says— “ Our 
swifts in general withdrew this year about the first day 
of August — all save one pair, which, in two or three 
days, was reduced to a single bird. The perseverance 
of this individual made me suspect that the strongest 
of motives, that of an attachment to her young, could 
alone occasion so late a stay, I watched, therefore, 
till the twenty-fourth of August, and then discovered 
that, under the eaves of the church, she attended upon 
two young which were fledged, and now put out their 
white chins from a crevice. These remained till the 
twenty-seventh, looking more alert every day, and 
seeming to long to be on the wing. After this day 
they were missing at once ; nor could I ever observe 
them with their dam coursing round the church, in the 
act of learning to fly, as the first broods evidently do. 
On the thirty-first, I caused the eaves to be searched ; 
but we found only two callow dead swifts, on which a 
second nest had been formed.” In this instance, it is 
evident that by some accident the first brood had been 
destroyed, that a second nest had been made over them, 
and a second brood produced ; that the male, yielding to 
the .strong impulse to migration, coolly took his depar- 
ture, leaving the cares of the family to his mate ; and 
that the latter, faithfully discharging the duty thus 
imposed upon her, remained for nearly a month, after 
the main body of her species had started on their 
journey southward. 
In another case recorded by Mr. Salmon in the 
Magazine of Natural History, the male bird behaved 
in a manner more consistent with his duty, and remained 
to share with his partner in the trouble of rearing their 
little family. In this instance also his forbearance was 
far more severely tried than it could have been in 
that observed by White, for on the second of Septem- 
ber the young birds found in the nest did not seem to 
be more than a week old, and it was not until the first 
of October that they were ready to fly ; three days 
afterwards the whole family disappeared. Single speci- 
mens, probably detained much in the same way as 
those just mentioned, have been met with even later in 
the season in various parts of this country ; thus Mr. 
Blackwall records his having seen one on the 20th 
October; one was seen in Perthshire on the 8th Novem- 
ber, 1834; and another in Devonshire in 1835, as late 
as the 27th November. 
THE ALPINE SWIFT (Cypselus melba), also called 
the White-Bellied Swift, is recorded as a second 
British species, some half a dozen specimens having 
been killed at different times in this country. Its tnie 
European home, however, is amongst the Swiss Alps 
and other high mountain ranges of the South of Europe ; 
it ranges eastward through Greece and Turkey into 
Asia, where it has even been met with in India, and in 
Africa it migrates southwards to the vicinity of the 
Cape of Good Hope. Its coloration is very different 
from that of the Common Swift. The whole of the 
upper surface is of a greyish-brown colour, as are also 
a band round the neck, the thighs, chest, and under 
tail-coverts ; the chin and throat, the lower parts of the 
chest and the bell}" are white. The length, to the 
extremity of the tail, is from eight to nine inches, and 
the expanse of the wings about twenty or twenty-one, 
so that in this respect it exceeds even the Common 
Swift. The rapidity of its flight is also described as 
greater than that of the preceding species, with which 
it agrees in its general habits. 
THE WHITE-EUMPED SWIFT {Cypselus a finis) is 
a common species in India, where it is very generally 
distributed. It is called the Ababeel by the Hindoos. 
It haunts pagodas, choultries, and other buildings, and 
makes its nest— which is composed of straw, grass, 
feathers, and other soft substances, mingled with clay 
— in the numerous crevices with which these edi- 
fices usually abound. The nests are usually built 
close together, but so as to be concealed wholly or 
partially by a beam, rafter, or some similar object lying 
before them. 
THE BATASSIAN SWIFT {Cypselus hatassiensis), 
another abundant Indian species, is said by Dr. Bu- 
chanan Hamilton, to be “ a nocturnal bird, appearing 
at sunset, and going to rest at sunrise.” According to 
the same authority, its Bengalee name, Batassia, “ sig- 
nifies a bird resembling wind, and is bestowed on this 
species on account of its swift flight.” It frequents the 
groves of palms, especially those of the Palmyra or Tal 
{Borassus flabelliformis), on the fan-like fronds of which 
it builds its nests. These little birds are sociable in their 
habits, as many as twenty or thirty pairs being often 
met with upon a single palm-tree ; and they also live in 
great harmony with their feathered neighbours of other 
species, for Mr. Blyth states, that it i.s “ rare to meet 
with one of the same palms clustered with the pensile 
nests of the Baya {Bloceus philippensis), that does not 
also harbour two or three pairs of this elegant little 
Palm Swift.” 
THE JAMAICA PALM SWIFT {Cypselus pTicenico- 
bius), regarded by M. Gosse, its first describer, as the 
type of a new genus which he denominates Tachornis, 
appears to be peculiar to the magnificent island of 
Jamaica, where it resides all the year round. The 
plumage of the upper parts of this interesting bird is of 
a smoky black colour, becoming brownish on the head ; 
the sides of the body beneath are also smoky black ; 
but the chin and throat, and the middle line of the 
belly, are white, and there is also a broad white 
band crossing the rump above, but this is often nearly 
divided into two spots by a black line descending from 
the back. 
Mr. Gosse’s account of the habits of this Palm Swift 
is so admirable, that we cannot do better than extract 
