CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 
23 
manners, migrations, or economy of these birds, the 
range of country they inhabit, or the superstitious 
notions entertained of them ; his only object at present 
is the correction of an error, which, from the respecta- 
bility of those by whom it was unwarily adopted, has 
been but too extensively disseminated, and received by 
too many as a truth,” 
GENUS XI V. — CYPSELUS, Illiger. 
69 . CYFSELUS PELASGIUS , TEMM. 
11 1 RUN BO PELASGIA , WILSON. • — CHIMNEY SWALLOW, WILSON. 
WILSON, PLATE XXXIX. FIG. I. EDINBURGH COLLEGE MUSEUM. 
This species is peculiarly our own ; and strongly 
distinguished from all the rest of our swallows by its 
figure, flight, and manners. These peculiarities shall be 
detailed as fully as the nature of the subject requires. 
This swallow, like all the rest of its tribe in the 
United States, is migratory, arriving in Pennsylvania 
late in April or early in May, and dispersing themselves 
over the whole country wherever there are vacant 
chimneys in summer sufficiently high and convenient 
for their accommodation. In no other situation with 
us are they observed at present to build. This circum- 
stance naturally suggests the query, Where did these 
birds construct their nests before the arrival of Euro- 
peans in this country, when there were no such places 
for their accommodation ? I would answer, Probably 
in the same situations in which they still continue to 
build in the remote regions of our western forests, 
where European improvements of this kind are scarcely 
to be found, namely, in the hollow of a tree, which, in 
some cases, has the nearest resemblance to their present 
choice, of any other. One of the first settlers in the 
State of Kentucky informed me, that he cut down a 
large hollow beech tree, which contained forty or fifty 
nests of the chimney swallow, most of which, by the 
fall of the tree, or by the weather, were lying at the 
