THE SPARROW IN AMERICA. 61 



five days, when the builders are working under the 

 most favorable auspices. 



The nest just described is unusually large, and is 

 the result of several additions to the original structure 

 after each brood-raising. Three broods had been success- 

 fully reared within its walls, and at the time of the 

 severance of the limb from the trunk of the tree, 

 preparations for a fourth brood were manifest. From 

 the great depth of its cavity, the labor of removing the 

 befouled materials, which would have been exceedingly 

 arduous and irksome to the birds, was spared ; a fresh 

 supply of feathers being carried into it for each succes- 

 sive brood. The preparations for the fourth brood were 

 being made during the last week of August. 



Another nest, which was collected late in June, was 

 built between a forked twig of the common swamp 

 maple. It is composed externally of fine and coarse 

 strings from the thickness of twine to that of sewing 

 silk, carpet rags, a few branchlets of Populus dilatata or 

 Lombardy poplar, and a modicum of rootlets. Inter- 

 nally, it is lined with a dense stratum of raw cotton. 

 It measures four and a half inches in diameter at the 

 mouth, and has a depth of two and a half inches. The 

 cavity is three inches wide, and one and a half inches 

 deep. The outer materials are far from being tastefully 

 interwoven, and the arrangement displays but little 

 artistic skill. If its present appearance affords any 

 criterion, the cotton had evidently been found en masse, 

 and is adjusted pretty much in the identical condition 

 which it presented when first discovered by the birds. 



The latter is the only nest of the kind that I have 

 met with. Its structure is somewhat anomalous. But 

 since my discovery, I have well-authenticated instances 



