148 
CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 
this is their practice. Being in the town of Reading, Penn- 
sylvania, in the month of August, I took notice of sixty or 
eighty of these birds, a little before evening, amusing them-’ 
selves, by ascending and descending the chimney of the 
court-house there. I was told, that in the early part of 
summer, they were far more numerous at that particular spot. 
On the 20th of May, in returning from an excursion to the 
Great Pine Swamp, I spent part of the day in the town of 
Easton, where I was informed by my respected friend, 
Mordecai Churchman, cashier of the bank there, and one of 
the people called quakers, that the Chimney Swallows of 
Easton had selected the like situation; and that, from the 
windows of . his house, which stands nearly opposite to the 
court-house, I might, in an hour or two, witness their whole 
manoeuvres. 
I accepted the invitation with pleasure. Accordingly, a 
short time after sunset, the Chimney Swallows, which were 
generally dispersed about town, began to collect around the 
court-house, their numbers every moment increasing, till, like 
motes in the sunbeams, the air seemed full of them. These, 
while they mingled amongst each other seemingly in every 
direction, uttering their peculiar note with great sprightliness, 
kept a regular circuitous sweep around the top of the court- 
house, and about fourteen or fifteen feet above it, revolving 
with great rapidity for the space of at least ten minutes. There 
could not be less than four or five hundred of them. They 
now gradually varied their line of motion, until one part of 
its circumference passed immediately over the chimney, and 
about five or six feet above it. Some as they passed made a 
slight feint of entering, which was repeated by those imme- 
diately after, and by the whole circling multitude in succes- 
sion : in this feint they approached nearer and nearer at every 
revolution, dropping perpendicularly, but still passing over; 
the circle meantime becoming more and more contracted, and 
the rapidity of its revolution greater, as the dusk of evening 
increased, until, at length, one, and then another, dropped in, 
