December 



fashioned into the form of a cocoanut. A small 

 hole is left two-thirds up for entrance" (an- 

 other writer says the front door always faces 

 the south), " the upper edge of which projects 

 like a pent-house over the lower to prevent the 

 admission of rain. The inside is lined with 

 fine, soft grass, and sometimes feathers, and the 

 outside, when hardened by the sun, resists 

 every kind of weather. This nest is generally 

 suspended among the reeds, above the reach of 

 the highest tides, and is tied so fast to every 

 part of the surrounding reeds as to bid defiance 

 to the winds and the waves." 



The nest of the cliff swallow, which is fash- 

 ioned into the shape of a gourd, is construct- 

 ed on the exterior entirely of pellets of mud 

 (bricks without straw), the interior softly lined, 

 and the whole attached by its larger part to 

 a building or cliff. Among all the designs of 

 nests, in this country at least, there is noth- 

 ing more picturesque than the deep, pendu- 

 lous structure of the Baltimore oriole, hanging 

 from near the extremity of a drooping branch 

 of an elm-tree, nearly seven inches in depth, 

 of cylindrical shape, the outer part a sort of 

 coarsely woven cloth made of thread, sewing- 

 silk, ravellings of any kind, strings of the flax 



317 



