248 THE NEST. 



Let us recollect, at the outset, that this charming object, so much 

 more delicate than words can describe, owes everything to art, to skill, 

 to calculation. The materials are generally of the rudest, and not 

 always those which the artist would have preferred. The instruments 

 are very defective. The bird has neither the squirrel's hand nor the 

 beaver's tooth. Having only his bill and his foot (which by no 

 means serves the purpose of a hand), it seems that the nest should be 

 to him an insoluble problem. The specimens now before my eyes are for 

 the most part composed of a tissue or covering of mosses, small flexible 

 branches, or long vegetable filaments ; but it is less a weaving than 

 a condensation ; a felting of materials, blended, beaten, and welded 

 together with much exertion and perseverance ; an act of great 

 labour and energetic operation, for which the bill and the claw would 

 be insufficient. The tool really used is the bird's own body his 

 breast with which he presses and kneads the materials until he has 

 rendered them completely pliable, has thoroughly mixed them, and 

 subdued them to the general work. 



And within, too, the implement which determines the circular 

 form of the nest is no other than the bird's body. It is by con- 

 stantly turning himself about, and ramming the wall on every side, 

 that he succeeds in shaping the circle. 



Thus, then, his house is his very person, his form, and his im- 

 mediate effort I would say, his suffering. The result is only obtained 





by a constantly repeated pressure of his breast. There is not one of 

 these blades of grass but which, to take and retain the form of a 



