BUZZARD'S REST. 45 



first. Then seeking the largest trees, it threads its way 

 on and on through the little woods, until its ultimate 

 fibres are lost among the countless twigs of twenty tree- 

 tops. I have said it is one hundred yards long. I do 

 not mean that this is its actual length. I could measure 

 this much with approximate accuracy, and there was yet 

 more, hopelessly beyond my reach. 



Imagine some great flood that stranded a rope-walk 

 here, and you can conceive how such a grape-vine looks 

 among the trees. How it crossed from tree to tree and 

 cleared open spaces where nothing but low shrubbery 

 has grown, since the vine started on its erratic wander- 

 ings, I leave the reader to conjecture. 



Leaving it, finally, in all its tangled glory, I hunted 

 long for birds'-nests of the past summer, but found none ; 

 and only by chance, as I was withdrawing from the 

 "Rest," did I see a nest of the yellow-throated vireo, 

 thirty or more feet above the water. 



This fine songster always builds quite out of reach, so 

 far as the egg -hunting small boy is concerned, and is 

 disposed to return to the same situation, summer after 

 summer, to rear its brood. In a maple-tree in the lane, 

 at home, the same individuals have for four summers 

 built their nest. It is not the same nest, repaired year 

 after year, but a new structure on the same or an adja- 

 cent limb. I say purposely the same individuals, for I 

 am convinced that very many of our birds remain mated 

 longer than a single season. This is a matter worthy of 

 most careful study, and I was glad to find a correspond- 

 ent of a scientific periodical remarking that, while " it 

 is generally taken for granted that our song-birds and 



