346 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



from that.^ The white may have been from a cocoon, 

 or else vegetable silk. Probably a vireo's nest, maybe 

 red-eye's. 



In our workshops we pride ourselves on discovering 

 a use for what had previously been regarded as waste, 

 but how partial and accidental our economy compared 

 with Nature's. In Nature nothing is wasted. Every 

 decayed leaf and twig and fibre is only the better fitted 

 to serve in some other department, and all at last are 

 gathered in her compost-heap. What a wonderful gen- 

 ius it is that leads the vireo to select the tough fibres 

 of the inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, 

 for its basket, the elastic pine-needles and the twigs, 

 curved as they dried to give it form, and, as I suppose, 

 the silk of cocoons, etc., etc., to bind it together with! 

 I suspect that extensive use is made of these abandoned 

 cocoons by the birds, and they, if anybody, know where 

 to find them. There were at least seven materials used 

 in constructing this nest, and the bird visited as many 

 distinct localities many times, always with the purpose 

 or design to find some particular one of these materials, 

 as much as if it had said to itself, "Now I will go and 

 get some old hornets' nest from one of those that I saw 

 last fall down in the maple swamp — perhaps thrust 

 my bill into them — or some silk from those cocoons I 

 saw this morning." 



^ Some of the same on my red-eye's nest. 



I 



