Ge IN BIRD LAND. 
VAL, 
NEST-HUNTING. 
OTHING in Nature is more pregnant with 
suggestion than the nest of a bird. The 
story of one of these deftly woven dwellings in the 
woods, if fully written, might prove almost as weird 
and romantic as the history of a castle on the Rhine. 
What madrigals, what pzeans, have been sung, and 
what victories celebrated, from the time the first 
fibres were braided until the chirping nestlings were 
able to shift for themselves! And, alas, how many 
fond hopes have perished as well! No doubt the 
ruses and subterfuges employed to elude cunning 
foes or ward off their murderous attacks, would fill 
a volume of valuable information on military tactics. 
One might write comedies or tragedies about the 
nest-life of the birds that would be no less inter- 
esting than realistic. More than that, the study of 
these wonderful fabrics would virtually be a study 
of the psychology of the feathered artisans, each 
nest being an index of a special type of mind and 
a measure of the bird’s mental resources. As 
William Hamilton Gibson has well said: “To know 
the nidification and nest-life of a bird is to get the 
