A REAL PRINCESS 197 



be with me quite suddenly, and yet so quietly, so 

 mousily, they never gave me a start. At other 

 times I used to see them coming, fluttering through 

 the sun-chequered lanes of the fir-trees, till, reach- 

 ing their very own one, they would sink, as it were, 

 through its frondage, full of caution and quietude, 

 descending, each time, by the same or nearly the 

 same little staircase of boughs, from the bottom step 

 of which they flew down. Some days afterwards, 

 they were still building their nest, but after that I 

 had to leave. The nest itself I pulled up and 

 examined, a year afterwards, and it disproved all my 

 theories as to what the birds had been building it 

 with. It was of considerable size — round, as was 

 the cavern in which it lay — and composed, almost 

 wholly, of three substances, viz. moss, wool, and 

 rabbits' fur. The two latter had been employed 

 to form the actual cup or bed — the blankets, so to 

 speak — whilst the moss made the mattress. All 

 three were in great abundance, and no royal 

 personage, I think — not even Hans Andersen's real 

 princess — can ever have slept in a softer or warmer 

 bed. It seems wonderful — almost incredible — that 

 these two tiny birds, carrying, each time, such a tiny 

 little piece, in their bills, could ever have got so great 

 a mass of materials together. There it was, how- 

 ever, one more example of the great results which 

 spring from constantly repeated small causes. The 

 cavity in which the nest was placed, was, no doubt, 

 a natural one, but the hole by which the birds entered 

 it was so very round, that it must, I think, have been 

 their own work, or, at least, modified by them. It 

 looked just as if a woodpecker had made it. 



