THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 239 



If we examine the form which our winged architects give 

 to their nuptial couches, or the materials of which they 

 build them, we see that they vary infinitely. Some birds, 

 like the eagles and goshawks, which build their eyries in 

 the midst of solitude and rocks, only employ in their con- 

 struction rough fragments of stick heaped up in disorder ; 

 others make use of leaves and moss, which they arrange 

 with skill. But such materials are still too coarse for the 

 delicate bodies of the sparkling army of humming-birds. 

 They, as, for example, the saw-beaked humming-bird, often 

 construct for themselves a charming little downy cup of 

 cotton, wherein to shelter their emeralds without sullying 

 the lustre of them. Other species of the same group, 

 which also make use of soft pillows, garnish the outside of 

 their nests with fragments of lichens, doubtless to hide it 

 better from the animals of prey that live in the midst of 

 the foliage. This is the case with the mango humming- 

 bird, the black plastron humming-bird of Buffon. 



the child, for they found nothing but one of her shoes on the edge of a precipice. 

 The child, however, was not carried to the eagle's nest, where only two eaglets 

 were seen, surrounded by heaps of goat and sheep bones. It was not till two 

 months after this that a shepherd discovered the corpse of Marie Delex, fright- 

 fully mutilated, and lying upon a rock half a league from where she had been 

 borne off. 



