NESTS AND NEST-BUILDING IN BIRDS 161 



ably contain, it is still a useful compendium. The recent, more 

 popular, or more restricted works on nests, like those of the 

 Keartons,' and Dugmore,^ are notable for their admirable pic- 

 tures after photographs. Birds' nests are notoriously difficult to 

 depict, and photography alone seems adequate to the task. Pos- 

 sibly the most elaborate representations of nests, not due to 

 photographic art, appeared in a work of joint authorship on the 

 nests and eggs of Ohio birds.' This Audubonian attempt at 

 pictorial completeness consists of sixty-eight foHo plates of eggs 

 and nests in full size, colored by hand, and with descriptive 

 letter-press. 



Bendire's " Life Histories of North American Birds " ^ is our 

 greatest treasury of facts pertaining to the nests, eggs, and breed- 

 ing habits of American birds, but the observations recorded on 

 the subject of nest-building are not very extensive. To the 

 same class also belongs a considerable list of ornithological 

 works from the days of Alexander Wilson and John James 

 Audubon to the present time, in all of which the nests and 

 nesting habits of birds have a prominent place, not to speak 

 of the almost innumerable monographs and special papers in 

 the principal languages, but since we are dealing with the sub- 

 ject from a somewhat different standpoint, it will not be pos- 

 sible to refer to many of these even by title. 



I have given a brief discussion of nest-building in an earlier 

 work, as illustrated in a limited number of common American 

 birds. ° Boulder Sharpe ' has brought together in popular form 

 much interesting matter pertaining to the nests of birds of the 

 world, and a very sane discussion in brief of the subject of nidifi- 

 cation within the avian class is given by Pycraft ' in his excel- 

 lent History of Birds, to which reference will be made later. 



The papers on this subject which seem to have attracted the 

 most attention are " The Philosophy of Birds' Nests," first pub- 



n<:earton, Richard and C: British Birds' Nests. London, 1895; revised ed., 

 1907; also Our Rarer British Breeding Birds. London, 1899. 



^ Dugmore, A. R.: Bird-Homes. New York, 1900. 



^ Jones, G. E. and Shulze, E. J. (with later co-operation of Mrs. N. E. Jones and 

 Howard Jones): Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of the Birds of Ohio. Pis. 

 i-xlviii, pp. i-xxxviii, xxxviii a-d, 41-329. Circleville, O., 1879-86. 



' Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vols, xxviii and xxxii. Washington, 

 1892 and 1895. 



« The Home Life of Wild Birds. New York, 1905. Chap. XL 



' Wonders of the Bird World. London, 1908. 



« Pycraft, W. P.: A History of Birds. London, 1910. Chap. XL ^ 



