498 
SWALLOW. 
next month, and Mr. Markwick observes that he 
has seen them as late in the year as the sixteenth of 
November ; but it was only a single bird or two, the 
main body having disappeared long before that 
time. 
As they always visit us in the spring, within twen- 
ty days of the same time, they sometimes suffer 
from the uncertainty of this climate, and have been 
seen gliding through thick flakes of falling snow. 
Buffon says that the year 1740 was fatal to many 
of them ; they gathered in great numbers about a 
brook which skirted a terrace then belonging to Mr. 
Hebert, where every minute some dropped down, 
and the water was covered with their dead bodies : 
nor was excessive cold the cause of their death ; it 
was evidently the want of food ; for those picked 
up were reduced to mere skeletons ; the walls of 
the terrace were their last resort, and they greedily 
devoured the dried flies that hung from the old spi- 
der webs. 
These birds build their nests in chimneys, one 
above another. They construct them with mud 
mixed with straw, leaving the top quite open : the 
inside is lined with grass and feathers; and here they 
lay from four to six eggs, sometimes quite white, 
and sometimes speckled with red. They breed 
twice in the season ; the first brood quits the nest 
the end of June or beginning of July, and the se- 
cond towards the end of August. The male is very 
attentive to the female while she sits upon the nest, 
and his soft sweet note may be heard from the 
