BLUE QUIT. 241 



Mr. Hill has favoured me with the following 

 interesting memorandum. "Feb. 5. 1838. Near 

 the piazza of my house a cotton-bush has flung out 

 its knots of white filaments. Hither come the birds 

 at this season to gather materials for constructing 

 their nests. The Blue Sparrow, a pretty little fru- 

 givorous bird that sings in our fruit trees, all the 

 year round, its merry twittering song, has been 

 busily engaged with his mate collecting bills-full 

 of cotton. It did not seem to be a thing imme- 

 diately settled that they should set to work and 

 gather their materials at once. They had alighted 

 on the tree as if they had very unexpectedly found 

 what they were seeking. The male began to twitter 

 a song of joy, dancing and jumping about, and the 

 female, intermingling every now and then a chirp, 

 frisked from stem to stem, and did very little more 

 than survey the riches of the tree: at least she 

 plucked now and then a bill-full of the filaments, 

 and spreading it to flaunt to the wind tossed it 

 away, as if she had been merely shewing that it 

 every way answered the purpose in length and soft- 

 ness, and was in every respect the thing they wanted. 

 At each of these displays of the kind and quality of 

 the materials, the male intermingled his twittering 

 song with a hoarse succession of notes, which were 

 always the same, chu^ chu, chu, chu, chivit ; to which 

 the female chirped two or three times in succession ; 

 then grasping another bill-full of cotton, tossed it 

 away as before, and obtained from the male the 

 same notes of attention and approval. At last they 

 set to work in earnest, gathered a load of the ma- 



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