530 AMPELID^. 



him pleasure. He might exhibit a nest and eggs at the same 

 time with a pair of hirds in breeding plumage to the Zoological 

 Society." In the meanwhile however the Author of this 

 work had passed away, and the privilege of exhibiting the 

 specimens devolved upon the Editor's brother, Mr. Edward 

 Newton, who took charge of them at the meeting of that 

 Society, when as before mentioned Wolley's communication 

 was read. 



This was subsequently printed in the Society's " Proceed- 

 ings" (1857, pp. 55, 56), and the most important part is 

 as follows : " The Waxwing, as observed in Lapland, makes 

 a good-sized and substantial nest, but without much indication 

 of advanced art. It is of some depth, and regularly shaped, 

 though built of rather intractable materials. As in those of 

 many other birds in the Arctic forests, the main substance is 

 of the kind of lichen commonly called tree-hair, which hangs 

 so abundantly from the branches of almost every tree. This 

 lichen somewhat resembles a mass of delicate rootlets, or 

 perhaps may be compared to coarse brown wool ; but some of 

 it is whitish, and in one nest there is a little of this mixed 

 with the ordinary brown or black. This main substance of 

 the nest is strengthened below by a platform of dead twigs, and 

 higher up towards the interior by a greater or less amount of 

 flowering stalks of grass, and occasionally pieces of equisetum. 

 It is also interspersed with a little rein-deer lichen, perhaps a 

 sprig or two of green moss, and even some pieces of willow 

 cotton. There may also be observed a little of the very fine 

 silvery-looking fibre of grass leaves which probably have been 

 reduced to that condition by long soaking in water. In one 

 of the nests examined there were several pen-feathers of 

 small birds as an apology for a lining. 



" The nest of the Waxwing is built on the branch of a 

 tree, not near the bole,* and rather, as one of the observers 

 has said, standing up from the branch like a Fieldfare's or 

 other Thrush's nest, than supported by twigs touching it at 



* The specimen here figured (page 537), the most perfect seen by the Editor, 

 is however placed close to the bole of a young Scotch fir. It was taken in 

 Finnish Lapland in 1861, and is now in the Cambridge Museum. 



