r roofs, and so never congregate
with their congeners. They are fearless while haunting their nesting-
places, and are not to be scared with a gun, and are often beaten down
with poles and cudgels as they stoop to go under the eaves. Swifts are
much infested with those pests to the genus called _hippoboscoe
hirundinis_; and often wriggle and scratch themselves in their flight to
get rid of that clinging annoyance.

Swifts are no songsters, and have only one harsh screaming note; yet
there are ears to which it is not displeasing, from an agreeable
association of ideas, since that note never occurs but in the most lovely
summer weather.

They never can settle on the ground but through accident, and, when down,
can hardly rise, on account of the shortness of their legs and the length
of their wings; neither can they walk, but only crawl; but they have a
strong grasp with their feet, by which they cling to walls. Their bodies
being flat they can enter a very narrow crevice; and where they cannot
pass on their bellies they will turn up edgewise.

The particular formation of the foot discriminates the swift from all the
British hirundines; and, indeed from all other known birds, the _hirundo
melba_, or great white-bellied swift of Gibraltar, excepted; for it is so
disposed as to carry "_omnes quatuor digitos anticos_"--all its four toes
forward; besides, the least toe, which should be the back toe, consists
of one bone alone, and the other three only of two apiece,--a
construction most rare and peculiar, but nicely adapted to the purposes
in which their feet are employed. This and some peculiarities attending
the nostrils and under mandible have induced a discerning naturalist to
suppose that this species might constitute a genus _per se_.

In London a party of swifts frequents the Tower, playing and feeding over
the river just below the bridge; others haunt some of the churches of the
Borough, next the fields, but do not venture, like the house-martin, into
the close crowded part of the town.

The Swedes have bestowed a very pertinent name on this swallow, calling
it "ring swala," from the perpetual rings or circles that it takes round
the scene of its nidification.

Swifts feed on _coleoptera_, or small beetles with hard cases over their
wings, as well as on the softer insects, but it does not appear how they
can procure gravel to grind their food, as swallows do, since they never
settle on the ground. Young ones