CEMENTERS. 95 



scribed ; and it must be confessed that it was a work 

 truly admirable, considering the instruments of the 

 little mechanics."* 



CHAPTER IX. 



CEMENTERS. 



ONE of the old classifications of birds ranged them 

 in three divisions, the first comprehending those 

 which muddled in the dust ; the second, those which 

 washed in the water ; and the third, those which did 

 both. A division, something upon the same princi- 

 ple, with regard to the building of nests, would com- 

 prehend, in the first class, birds which used no sali- 

 vary cement ; in the second, those which did ; and 

 in the third, those which used it only in a portion, 

 not the whole of their structures. In no circum- 

 stance of nest-building has there been more error 

 promulgated in books of natural history than with 

 respect to this cement, few naturalists seeming to 

 be aware of its existence ; but finding nests so neat- 

 ly compacted, and their parts adhering firmly to 

 one another as well as to walls and boughs of trees, 

 authors think it requisite to name some adhesive 

 material by which this is accomplished ; and, when 

 there is no clay in the edifice, spiders' web is the 

 substance generally fixed upon. We do not indeed 

 deny that both the webs of spiders and of the social 

 caterpillars are partly employed by some birds ; 

 but this is by no means an occurrence common to 

 all the small, neatly-built nests of our song-birds and 

 some others, as we are taught in books to believe. 

 As this very point involves one of the most curious 

 discussions connected with the subject of nests, we 



* Oiseaux d'Afrique, iii., 77, &c. 



