PEE METI CAN  GOLDFEINCH. 53 
baffled four times.” —( Forest and Stream and Rod and Gun, Vol. X., p. 
443, July 11, 1878.) 
THE NEST AND EGGS. 
Of the nest and eggs of the American Goldfinch, the same pleasing 
writer observes : ‘‘ Few specimens of ornithic skill in architecture have 
been more elaborately dwelt upon than the nest of the Goldfinch. Yet, 
although very attractive in its result, it is by no means a conspicuous 
example of a bird’s ingenuity, as in the well woven purse of the 
Baltimore Oriole ; for the Goldfinch, simply mats her pretty materials 
together by movements of her feet and body, not attempting to inter- 
weave much or knit by the aid of the bill.” 
“Not being particular as to kind, so that the requisite softness and 
pliability are obtained, and gathering materials close by, the various 
substances entering into the composition of half the Goldfinch’s nests 
collected would make a long catalogue. Outwardly, the ordinary nest, 
which is about the size of a large tea-cup (only in most cases much 
higher), exhibits a felting of vegetable fibres, shreds of reddish bark, 
fragments of ragged grasses, leaves, hemp, bits of fungus, tassels and 
flowers of various delicate weeds and grasses, with more or less 
vegetable wool, spiders’ webs and lichens loosely attached. Through 
the surface, in such a way as to hold it stoutly in place, pass the 
supporting twigs of the crotch in which the whole rests. The mass of 
these materials, in which often a great deal of wool, fern-down and the 
like stuff is mixed, causes the walls to be thick and dense.  Interiorly 
a receptacle for the sitting bird is hollowed and lined with fine rootlets, 
horse-hair, ‘plumose appendages, or pappus of the seeds of composite 
plants,’ raw cotton and fern-wool, In all these nests one element is 
