The familiar swallow, _Hirundo rustica_, though subject to certain geographical variations, is found throughout the Palæarctic and Nearctic regions, nesting throughout Europe to between 63° and 70° north and in Africa north of the Sahara, where, however, Canon Tristram found it also wintering in the oases. South of the Sahara to the Cape it is a winter visitor. In Asia it breeds, according to Seebohm, in Asia Minor, Persia, Afghanistan, and western Siberia, and winters in Scinde and western India. One form breeds in and north of the Himalayas, eastward to China and Japan, and winters in India and Burma, and another ranges from eastern Siberia across Behring Strait throughout North America, so far south as Mexico. This form winters in Burma, in Central America and Brazil, but the Mexican birds are more or less stationary at all seasons. Our swallow and its congeners have an almost cosmopolitan range, summering in the Northern and wintering in the Southern Hemisphere or comparatively near to the Equator in the Northern. Towards the centre of its range its migrations are either short or the bird is non-migratory. Mr W. L. Sclater, addressing the South African Ornithologists' Union (42), stated that the swallow arrives at Cape Town at the end of October, and is common from November to March; practically all have left by the middle of April. Swallows begin to arrive from the south in Africa north of the Sahara in the latter half of February; early in March they reach southern Europe, later in the same month they are in Central Europe and by the middle of April large numbers arrive in England. Thus swallows leave South Africa actually after they have arrived in England; the South African birds cannot be the same which are in North Africa a month earlier! The swallow supports Seebohm's thesis that the individuals which go farthest to the south in winter, breed farthest north. A day-migrant and by no means a rapid one, the swallow may be timed from place to place, and it is not presumption to suggest that the birds which reach Britain to nest came from lands little south of the Sahara and well north of the Equator, and that those which pass through England and along our shores in May and even June are on their way from Southern Africa to the northernmost limits of their range. Mr Sclater points out one very interesting fact; when the swallow reaches South Africa it is in ragged worn plumage, before it begins its northward journey it passes through its one annual moult.