The Wit of the Wild 



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and made a beginning on one only to turn dis- 

 contentedly to the next one, until every timber 

 on one side of the gable was spotted with muddy 

 semicircles. I showed this situation to a liter- 

 ary neighbor, and he immediately wrote a very 

 pretty and moral essay upon it, but he totally 

 neglected to explain by what criterion, philo- 

 sophical or sentimental, one timber was at last 

 chosen, so that now a nest is really being com- 

 pleted. The literary essays that deal with na- 

 ture are often most disappointingly deficient, 

 as I have observed, in respect to the very things 

 I most want to know. If I could find out just 

 what the phoebes need or prefer, I should be 

 delighted to furnish them with precisely suit- 

 able quarters, for the sake of their society. 



One day I noticed that the male no longer 

 appeared, but the female went on doing all the 

 work, as probably she would choose to do in 

 any case, tearing up thread-like moss by the 

 roots, and bringing it, with as much attached 

 mud as possible, to be plastered into a cup-like 

 structure, where the moss continues alive and 

 keeps green and growing. She worked all day, 



