96 PASSERES. TURDID^E. 



of " The Architecture of Birds," thus describes 

 its construction from personal observation : " The 

 interior of these nests is about the form and size 

 of a large breakfast tea-cup, being as uniformly 

 rounded, and, though not polished, almost as 

 smooth. For this little cup the parent-birds lay a 

 massive foundation of moss, chiefly the proliferous 

 and the fern-leafed feather-moss (Hypnum pro- 

 liferum et H. Jilicinum), or any other which is 

 sufficiently tufted. As the structure advances, 

 the tufts of moss are brought into a rounded wall 

 by means of grass-stems, wheat-straw, or roots, 

 which are twined with it and with one another up 

 to the brim of the cup, where a thicker band of 

 the same materials is hooped round, like the 

 mouth of a basket. The rounded form of this 

 frame-work is produced by the bird measuring it, 

 at every step of the process, with its body, par- 

 ticularly the part extending from the thigh to the 

 chin ; and when any of the straws or other ma- 

 terials will not readily conform to this guage, they 

 are carefully glued into their proper place by 

 means of saliva, a circumstance which may be 

 seen in many parts of the same nest, if carefully 

 examined. When the shell, or frame, as it may 

 be called, is completed in this manner, the bird 

 begins the interior masonry by spreading pellets 

 of horse or cow-dung on the basket-work of moss 

 and straw, beginning at the bottom, which is in- 

 tended to be the thickest, and proceeding gra- 

 dually from the central points. This material, 

 however, is too dry to adhere of itself with suffi- 

 cient firmness to the moss, and on this account it 

 is always laid on with the saliva of the bird as a 

 cement ; yet it must require no small patience in 



