BALTIMORE ORIOLE. 53 
exultant love, then curving into a low, soft ca- 
dence, vibrating with caressing tenderness, it 
finally rounds off with broken notes of entreaty so 
full of courtly devotion and submission, yet, withal, 
so musical and earnest with tender love, that you 
feel sure his suit can never be denied. 
When the oriole comes to build his nest and 
you compare his work with that of the robin, you 
feel that you have an artistic Queen Anne beside 
arude mud hovel. The term hang-nest is strictly 
applicable. The birds are skillful weavers and 
build long, delicate, pocket-shaped nests that look 
as if made of gray moss. These they hang from 
the end of a branch, as if thinking of the first 
line of the old nursery rhyme, — 
‘* When the wind blows the cradle will rock, 
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,’? — 
and, indeed, the cradles are built by such clever 
workmen that the bough must needs break to give 
them a fall. The nest looks as if it barely touched 
the twigs from which it hangs, but when you ex- 
amine it you may find that the gray fibres have 
woven the wood in so securely that the nest would 
have to be torn in pieces before it could be loos- 
ened from the twigs. What is the nest made of ? 
It shines as if woven with threads of gray silk, 
but it must be field silk from the stems of plants. 
And the horse hairs? Mr. Burroughs tells of one 
oriole who went bravely into the back part of a 
horse stable for its hair lining. Sometimes a bit 
