150 
CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 
their total disappearance, they entirely forsook the court-house 
chimney, and rendezvoused in accumulated numbers in the 
southernmost chimney of John Ross’s mansion, situated per- 
haps one hundred feet northeastward of the court-house. In 
this last retreat I several times counted more than two hundred 
go in of an evening, when I could not perceive a single bird 
enter the court-house chimney. I was much diverted one 
evening on seeing a cat, which came upon the roof of the 
house, and placed herself near the chimney, where she strove 
to arrest the birds as they entered without success : she at 
length ascended to the chimney top and took her station, and 
the birds descended in gyrations without seeming to regard 
grimalkin, who made frequent attempts to grab them. I was 
pleased to see that they all escaped her fangs. About the 
first week in the ninth month, [September,] the birds quite 
disappeared ; since which I have not observed a single indi- 
vidual. Though I was not so fortunate as to be present at 
their general assembly and council, when they concluded to 
take their departure, nor did I see them commence their flight, 
yet I am fully persuaded that none of them remain in any of 
our chimneys here. I have had access to Ross’s chimney, 
where they last resorted, and could see the lights out from 
bottom to top, without the least vestige or appearance of any 
birds. Mary Ross also informed me, that they have had 
their chimneys swept previous to their making fires, and, 
though late in autumn, no birds have been found there. 
Chimneys, also, which have not been used, have been ascended 
by sweeps in the winter without discovering any. Indeed, all 
of them are swept every fall and winter, and I have never 
heard of the Swallows being found, in either a dead, living, or 
torpid state. As to the court-house, it has been occupied as a 
place of worship two or three times a-week for several weeks 
past, and at those times there has been fire in the stoves, the 
pipes of them both going into the chimney, which is shut up 
at bottom by brick work : and, as the birds had forsaken that 
place, it remains pretty certain that they did not return there ; 
