FELT-MAKING BIRDS. 83 



nest to the extremity of a tender twig, but makes 

 one more advance to safety by fixing it to the leaf 

 itself. It picks up a dead leaf and sews it to the side 

 of a living one, its slender bill being its needle, and 

 its thread some fine fibres ; the lining consists of 

 feathers, gossamer, and down ; its eggs are white ; 

 the colour of the bird light yellow ; its length three 

 inches ; its weight three sixteenths of an ounce ; so 

 that the materials of the nest and the weight of the 

 bird are not likely to draw down a habitation so 

 slightly suspended." 



CHAPTER VIII. 



FELT-MAKING BIRDS. 



THE resemblance of the texture of some of the 

 more elegant nests of small birds to that of a hat or 

 a piece of double-milled woollen cloth, may not 

 have struck many of our readers, because the most 

 compact of the nests alluded to feel loose when 

 compared with a hat or a piece of thick cloth. But, 

 when closely examined, the materials will be found 

 arranged in a very similar manner, being, as it were, 

 carded into one another, and not interwoven thread 

 by thread or hair by hair, as we have described to 

 be the case with the nests of basket-making and 

 weaver birds. 



The indispensable substance in all these nests, 

 how different soever they may be in the outward 

 materials, is fine wool, with which the moss, lichen, 

 spiders' nests, tufts of cotton, or bark scales, are 

 carefully and neatly felted into a texture of wonder- 

 ful uniformity. The wool, of course, is the material 

 by which this is effected, no other substance which 

 the bird could select being capable of matting so 



