178 
THE REPUBLICAN OR CLIFF SWALLOW. 
the heat of the sun was necessary to dry and harden their moist tenements. 
They then ceased from labour for a few hours, amused themselves by per- 
forming aerial evolutions, courted and caressed their mates with much 
affection, and snapped at flies and other insects on the wing. They often 
examined their nests to see if they were sufficiently dry, and as soon as these 
appeared to have acquired the requisite firmness, they renewed their labours. 
Until the females began to sit, they all roosted in the hollow limbs of the 
sycamores ( Platanus occidentalis ) growing on the banks of the Licking- 
river, but when incubation commenced, the males alone resorted to the trees. 
A second party arrived, and were so hard pressed for time, that they betook 
themselves to the holes in the wall, where bricks had been left out for the 
scaffolding. These they fitted with projecting necks, similar to those of the 
complete nests of the others. Their eggs were deposited on a few bits of 
straw, and great caution was necessary in attempting to procure them, as the 
slightest touch crumbled their frail tenement into dust. By means of a table- 
spoon,’ I was enabled to procure many of them. Each nest contained four 
eggs, which were white, with dusky spots. Only one brood is raised in a 
season. The energy with which they defended their nests was truly asto- 
nishing. Although I had taken the precaution to visit them at sun-set, when 
I supposed they would all have been at rest, yet a single female happening 
to give the alarm, immediately called out the whole tribe. They snapped at 
my hat, body and legs, passed between me and the nests, within an inch of 
my face, twittering their rage and sorrow. They continued their attacks as 
I descended, and accompanied me for some distance. Their note may be 
perfectly imitated by rubbing a cork damped with spirit against the neck of 
a bottle. 
A third party arrived a few days after, and immediately commenced build- 
ing. In one week they had completed their operations, and at the end of 
that time thirty nests hung clustered like so many gourds, each having a 
neck two inches long. On the 27th July, the young were able to follow 
their parents. They all exhibited the white frontlet, and were scarcely dis- 
tinguishable in any part of their plumage from the old birds. On the 1st of 
August, they all assembled near their nests, mounted some three hundred 
feet in the air, and about ten o’clock in the morning took their departure, 
flying in a loose body, in a direction due north. They returned the same 
evening about dusk, and continued these excursions, no doubt to exercise 
their powers, until the third, when, uttering a farewell cry, they shaped the 
same course at the same hour, and finally disappeared. Shortly after their 
departure, I was informed that several hundreds of their nests were attached 
to the court-house at the mouth of the Kentucky river. They had com- 
menced building them in 1815. A person likewise informed me, that, along 
