THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 273 



kind of ladder, by which the family are enabled to mount to 

 their resting-place, after swimming home. 



It has often been repeated in old works on natural his- 

 tory that the reed warbler (Motacilla arundinacea) fixes its 

 nest, which is of interlaced grasses, to the reeds, and that 

 the elegant cradle, filled with the young, floats on the sur- 

 face of our streams, rising or falling along with the support- 

 ing plants according as the water rises or falls, but always 

 swimming on the surface and preserving the young from 

 shipwreck. 



This is not correct, however. The nest of the warbler 

 displays an ingenious structure, and that is all. It is formed 

 of tangled grass, and is always fixed near the top of three 

 stems of the common reed. It is in this that the pretty 

 little female hatches her eggs in security. But its nest 

 neither rises nor falls upon the tripod of plants which it 

 binds closely together, and if it did it would not float, being 

 quite permeable by water, so that the brood would be 

 drowned. 



The ancient authors, both poets and historians, have 

 often celebrated other floating nests, namely, those of the 

 Halcyon, the bird that delighted to live in the midst of the 

 waves, rocked with its nestlings in the floating cradle which 

 it intrusted to the sea. In their charming fables they re- 

 late that it was towards the setting of the Pleiades that the 

 bird of the storm built it. Then the murmur of the waves 

 ceased, and the winds grew silent, in order that the work of 

 God might be accomplished on a tranquil sea. These were 

 the beautiful days which in the East occur at the winter 

 solstice, and which the pilots called " the days of the 

 Halcyon " 



