SUMMER YELLOW-BIRD OR WARBLER. 367 



eating her nest. Although their song may be heard, 

 less vigorously, to the month of August, yet they do not 

 here appear to raise more than a single brood. 



The nest, in Massachusetts, is commonly fixed in the 

 forks of a barberry bush, close shrub, or sapling, a few 

 feet from the ground ; at other times, I have known the 

 nest placed upon the horizontal branch of a horn-beam, 

 more than 15 feet from the ground, or even 50 feet high 

 in the forks of a thick sugar-maple or orchard tree. 

 These lofty situations are, however, extraordinary ; and 

 the little architects, in instances of this kind, sometimes 

 fail of giving the usual security to their habitation. The 

 nest is extremely neat and durable ; the exterior is form- 

 ed of layers of Asclepias or silk-weed lint, glutinously 

 though slightly attached to the supporting twigs, mix- 

 ed with some slender strips of fine bark and pine leaves, 

 and thickly bedded with the down of willows, the nan- 

 keen-wool of the Virginian cotton-grass,* the down of 

 fern stalks, the hair from the downy seeds of the button- 

 wood (Platanus), or the pappus of compound flowers ; and 

 then lined either with fine-bent grass (Agjwstis), or down, 

 and horse-hair, and rarely with a few accidental feath- 

 ers. Circumstances sometimes require a variation from 

 the usual habits of the species. In a garden in Roxbury, 

 in the vicinity of Boston, T saw a nest built in a currant- 

 bush, in a small garden very near to the house ; and, as 

 the branch did not present the proper site of security, a 

 large floor of dry grass and weeds was first made betwixt 

 it and a contiguous board fence ; in the midst of this 

 mass of extraneous materials, the small nest was excava- 

 ted, then lined with a considerable quantity of white horse- 

 hair, and finished with an interior bed of soft cow-hair. 

 The season proving wet and stormy, the nest in this 



*Eriophorum virginicum. 



