160 BIRES'-NESTS. 



with four pearl-white eggs, looking out upon 

 some wild scene and overhung by beetling 

 crags. After all has been said about the 

 elaborate, high-hung structures, few nests, 

 perhaps, awaken more pleasant emotions in 

 the mind of the beholder than this of the 

 pewee, the gray, silent rocks, with caverns 

 and dens where the fox and the wolf lurk, 

 and just out of their reach, in a little niche, 

 as if it grew there, the mossy tenement ! 



Nearly every high projecting rock in my 

 range has one of these nests. Following a 

 trout stream up a wild mountain gorge, not 

 long since, I counted five in the distance of 

 a mile, all within easy reach, but safe from 

 the minks and the skunks, and well housed 

 from the storms. In my native town I know 

 a pine and oak clad hill, round-topped, with 

 a bold, precipitous front extending half-way 

 around it. Near the top, and along this 

 front or side, there crops out a ledge of rocks 

 unusually high and cavernous. One im- 

 mense layer projects many feet, allowing a 

 person or many persons, standing upright, to 

 move freely beneath it. There is a delicious 

 spring of water there, and plenty of wild, 

 cool air. The floor is of loose stone, now 

 trod by sheep and foxes, once by the Indian 



