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Updated: June 24, 2025
The former progresses with ease at the rate of 100 miles an hour: the latter can cover 125 miles, while the former is flying 100. If we poor human beings were possessed of the motive power of swifts we should think nothing of flying to England on ten days' casual leave.
I cannot count or distinguish the separate stroke of its wings. At the same time, the chimney swifts sweep by me like black arrows, on wings apparently as stiff as if made of tin or sheet-iron, now beating the air, now sailing. In some way they suggest winged gimlets. How thin and scimitar-like their wings are! They are certainly masters of their own craft.
Think, too, of the poor green and brown tree frogs with their sucker feet, compelled always to hop along the ground! Lizards, from tiny swifts to sixty-inch iguanas, would sorely miss the trees, while the lithe green tree snakes and the tree boas would have to change all their life habits in order to be able to exist. But as for the cold, uncanny turtles and alligators, what are trees to them!
One reason for this was that a rival firm of submarine builders got wind of the treasure, and tried to get ahead of the Swifts in recovering it.
He saw wonderful things, day after day, looking down at the green fields or peering into the gloomy reaches of the wood; and he talked about them. 'Uncle Eb is that where the swifts are? he would ask often; and the old man would answer, 'No; they ain't real sassy this time o' year. They lay 'round in the deep dingles every day.
The next ten years of Carleton's life may be told in his own words, as follows: "The year of 1830 may be taken as a general date for a new order of social life. The years prior to that date were the days of homespun. I remember the loom in the garret, the great and small spinning-wheels, the warping bars, quill wheel, reels, swifts, and other rude mechanisms for spinning and weaving.
On the side of the house next to the cliffs was what we called the "Long House," where the negro women would spin and weave. There were wheels, little and big, and a loom or two, and swifts and reels, and winders, and everything for making linen for the summer, and woolen cloth for the winter, both linsey and jeans. The flax was raised on the place, and so were the sheep.
Colonies of swifts, swallows, and martins are a dominant feature of English village life during the warm months; and though there are fastidious folk who take not wholly culpable exception to their little visitors on the score of cleanliness, most of us welcome them back each year, if only for the sake of the glad season of their stay.
The swifts will be considered in their proper place. Three species of swallow are likely to be seen in the Himalayas. This bird should require no description. Its glossy purple-blue plumage, the patches of chestnut red on the forehead and throat, and the elegantly-forked tail must be familiar to every Englishman.
For some additional evidence, although this is not wanted, see Leroy, 'Lettres Phil. 1802, p. 217. For Swifts, Gould's 'Introduction to the Birds of Great Britain, 1823, p. 5. Similar cases have been observed in Canada by Mr. Adams; 'Pop.
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