OF NATURAL HISTORY. 327 



* obliged to exert an unufual artifice in placing their little 

 « broods out of the reach of an invader. Each aims at the 



* fame end, though by different means ; fome form their 



< penfile neft in Ihape of a purfe, deep and open at top, oth» 



* ers with a hole in the fide, and others, ftill more cau- 

 ' tious, with an entrance at the very bottom, forming their 



* lodge near the fummit*. But the taylor-bird feems to 



* have greater diffidence than any of the others : It will 



* not trufl its neft even to the extremity of a flender 



< twig, but makes one more advance to fafety by fixing 



< it to the leaf itfelf. It picks up a dead leaf, and fur- 

 ' prifing to relate, fews it to the fide of a living onef, 



< its flender bill being its needle, and its thread fome fine 



* fibres, the lining feathers, goffamer, and down. Its eggs 

 ^ are white, the colour of the bird light yellow ; its length 



* three inches ; its weight only three fixteenths of an ounce ; 



< fo that the materials of the neft, and its own fize, are not 

 « likely to draw down a habitation that depends on fo flight 

 ' a tenure ij:.' 



Birds of the gallinaceous or poultry kind lay their eggs on 

 the ground. Some of them fcrape a kind of a hole in the 

 earth, and line it with a little long grafs or ftraw. 



It is a Angular, though a well attefted fa^V, that the cuckow 

 makes no neft, and neither hatches nor feeds her own young. 



< The hedge-fparrow,' fays Mr. Willoughby, < is the cuckow's 



* nurfe, but not the hedge-fparrow only, but alfo ring-doves, 



< larks, finches. I myfelf, with many others, have feen a 

 ' wag-tail feeding a young cuckow. The cuckow herfelf 

 « builds no neft j but having found the neft of fome little 



* bird, fhe either devours or deftroys the eggs fhe there finds, 



* This inftindl prevails alfo among the birds on the banks of the Gambia, in 

 Africa, which abounds with monjceys and fnakes : others, for the fame end, 

 m;ike their neft in noles of the banks that overhang that vaft river ; Pur- 

 ch;:s, vol, 2, page 1576. 



+ A neft of this bird is preferved in the Britifh Mufeum. 

 j Pennant's Indian Zoology, page 7. 



