BARN SWALLOW. 
133 
observed, with surprise, a pair of these Swallows which had 
taken up their abode on a miserable cabin there. It was then 
about sunrise, the ground white with hoar frost, and the male 
was twittering on the roof by the side of his mate with great 
sprightliness. The man of the house told me that a single 
pair came regularly there every season, and built their nest 
on a projecting beam under the eaves, about six or seven feet 
from the ground. At the bottom of the mountain, in a large 
barn belonging to the tavern there, I counted upwards of 
twenty nests, all seemingly occupied. In the woods they are 
never met with ; but, as you approach a farm, they soon catch 
the eye, cutting their gambols in the air. Scarcely a barn, 
to which these birds can find access, is without them; and, as 
public feeling is universally in their favour, they are seldom 
or never disturbed. The proprietor of the barn last men- 
tioned, a German, assured me, that if a man permitted the 
Swallows to be shot, his cows would give bloody milk, and 
also that no barn where Swallows frequented would ever be 
struck with lightning; and I nodded assent. When the 
tenets of superstition “ lean to the side of humanity,” one 
can readily respect them. On the west side of the 
Alleghany these birds become more rare. In travelling 
through the states of Kentucky and Tennesee, from Lexing- 
ton to the Tennesee river, in the months of April and May, 
I did not see a single individual of this species ; though the 
Purple Martin, and, in some places, the Bank Swallow, was 
numerous. 
Early in May they begin to build. From the size and 
structure of the nest, it is nearly a week before it is com- 
pletely finished. One of these nests, taken on the 21st of 
June from the rafter to which it was closely attached, is now 
lying before me. It is in the form of an inverted cone, with a 
perpendicular section cut off on that side by which it adhered 
to the wood. At the top it has an extension of the edge, 
or offset, for the male or female to sit on occasionally, as 
appeared by the dung; the upper diameter was about six 
