142 BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



and that this is a practice very common also in 

 Canada." 



When this part of Hertford's letter was read, 

 my uncle said* that a friend of his who had been 

 for some time at Stockton upon Tees, observed 

 that the cattle, who always came to drink at the 

 river when the tide was out, and the salt-water 

 retired, calculated the proper time with unfailing 

 precision. 



2lst. I have been looking, in a description of 

 foreign birds, and I find that besides my little fa- 

 vourites with pendant nests, there is another very 

 pretty species in North America, called the red- 

 winged starling ; it is found everywhere from Nova 

 Scotia to Mexico but not in the West Indies. 

 In autumn they migrate to Louisiana in such 

 multitudes that, flying close together, they abso- 

 lutely darken the air, and three hundred of them 

 have been caught at one drag of a net. The males 

 are distinguished by a bright red patch on the 

 wing or shoulder, and formerly when these were 

 worn by ladies as ornamental trimmings for their 

 gowns, a person collected forty thousand of them 

 in one winter. 



They build among aquatic plants, in places 

 that are inaccessible \ suspending their nests be- 

 tween two reeds, the leaves of which they inter- 

 lace and form into a sort of shed or covering. 

 To the nest they give solidity by grass bound 



