60 
SWALLOW NESTS. 
not supposed to be possessed of any very superior 
medical qualities, and are chiefly sold as articles of 
luxury, and ornaments for the tables of the rich 
Chinese. Their mode of using them, is, to put them, 
after being well soaked and cleaned, along with a 
fat capon or duck, into an earthen pot closely 
covered, and suffered to boil over a slow fire for 
twenty-four hours. 
Swallows are generally hailed as welcome guests, 
and allowed to fix their plastered dwellings, without 
molestation, under the eaves or corners of window- 
sills; but, when very numerous, they are apt to 
occasion a good deal of dirt, and when once esta- 
blished, it is by no means easy to drive them away. 
This, however, may be effected by rubbing the 
comers of the windows with soft-soap early in the 
Spring. This was practised with success, in a house, 
the windows of which used to be quite darkened by 
the dirt, &c., occasioned by a colony of nests. The 
Swallows, on their arrival, began to build as usual ; 
but as fast as they attempted to attach their mate- 
rials to the stone, they slipped off. For some days, 
they renewed their attempts, but then gave the 
matter up ; and what was very remarkable, although 
the soaping was never renewed, not a single Swallow 
ever afterwards attempted to build on the windows, 
not even on those which had not been soaped, though 
several built in the adjacent out-houses and imme- 
diate neighbourhood. 
But we fear we are suggesting a needless remedy 
for an inconvenience not likely to recur; for, within 
the last few years, particularly since 1809, these 
pretty social Summer visiters, like our Starlings, 
