GOLDEN ORIOLE. 239 



small flocks, fly well, and frequent high trees, among the 

 foliage of which they seek for caterpillars, soft insects, and 

 fruits. 



The Golden Oriole is the only European species of the 

 genus, and its nest is very different in shape from those of 

 some of its foreign congeners, which are elongated, purse- 

 like, and pendant. The nest of the Golden Oriole is rather 

 flat and saucer-shaped, generally placed in the horizontal 

 fork of a bough of a tree, to both branches of which it is 

 firmly attached. The materials used to form the nest are 

 sheep's wool and long slender stems of grass, which are so 

 curiously interwoven as mutually to confine and sustain 

 each other. The vignette at the end of this article re- 

 presents a nest of this bird, taken, by permission, from a 

 specimen presented to the Zoological Society by Professor 

 Passerini of Florence. Another nest of this bird, exactly 

 resembling the one just referred to in form, materials, and 

 structure, is represented by Mr. Meyer in his Illustra- 

 tions of British Birds, from a nest taken in Suffolk ; and 

 I have been told that Mr. Scales of Beecham Well had 

 eggs of the Golden Oriole in his collection which had been 

 taken in Norfolk. The eggs are usually four or five in 

 number, one inch two lines long, and ten lines in breadth, 

 of a wliite colour slightly tinged with purple, and with a 

 few distinct spots of ash-grey and claret colour. The 

 female is said to be so tenacious of her eggs as to suffer 

 herself to be taken with the nest. A writer in the Natu- 

 ralist mentions having seen a pair of young birds in nearly 

 full plumage exhibited for sale in the public market at 

 Cologne, for which he was asked the moderate sum of 

 three shillings. Bechstein says that the parent birds rear 

 but one brood in a season ; which helps to account for the 

 scarcity of this very handsome bird. The food of this 



