SPECIES 5. HIP UNDO PELASGM.^ 
CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 
[Plate XXXIX.— Fig. 1.] 
Lath. Syn. v, 2 ^. 585 — 32. — Catksb. Car. Jipp . t . 8. — Hirundella 
da la Caroline, Buff. vi,]j. 700. — Hirundo Carolinensis, Baiss. 
II, p . 501, 9. — Jlculeated Sivallow, Jlrct, Zool. u,JVo. 335 — 18. 
— Turt. Syst. p . 630. — Pf.ale’s Museum, JVb. 7663. 
This species is peculiarly our own; and strongly distinguish- 
ed from all the rest of our Swallows by its figure, flight, and 
manners. Of the first of these the representation in the plate 
will give a correct idea; its other peculiarities shall be detailed 
as fully as the nature of the subject requires. 
This Swallow, like all the rest of its tribe in the United 
States, is migratory, arriving in Pennsylvania late in April or 
early in May, and dispersing themselves over the whole coun- 
try wherever there are vacant chimneys in summer sufficiently 
high and convenient for their accommodation. In no other situ- 
ation with us are they observed at present to build. This cir- 
cumstance naturally suggests the query. Where did these birds 
construct their nests before the arrival of Europeans in this 
country, when there were no such places for their accommoda- 
tion? I would answer probably in the same situations in which 
they still continue to build in the remote regions of our west- 
ern forests, where European improvements of this kind are 
scarcely to be found, namely, in the hollow of a tree, which in 
some cases has the nearest resemblance to their present choice 
of any other. One of the first settlers in the state of Kentucky 
informed me, that he cut down a large hollow beech tree which 
contained forty or fifty nests of the Chimney Swallow, most of 
* Lisrx. Sijst. I, p. 345. — Gmel. Sysl. i, p. 1023. — Lath. Ind. Orn. ri, p. 581. 
