I0 8 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



Remembering Wilson's investigations into the similarly com- 

 pact nest-fabric of the orchard oriole, from which he disentan- 

 gled a strand of grass only thirteen inches long, but which in 

 that distance was thirty-four times hooked through and returned 

 in the meshes, the relation of which fact led an old lady acquaint- 

 ance of his to ask whether " it would not be possible to teach the 

 birds to darn stockings," I was led to test the darning skill of 

 the hang -bird which uses the horse -hair in true regulation style. 

 With much labor I succeeded in following a single hair through 

 fourteen passes from outside to interior in the length of about 

 ten inches, which I was then quite willing to assume as an aver- 

 age as to the total, which would doubtless have reached at least 

 thirty stitches. When this is multiplied by the hundreds of simi- 

 lar sinews with which the body of the nest is compacted some 

 idea may be formed of its strength. 



Two types of the nest, both beautiful specimens, are now be- 

 fore me. One, a true example of the "hang -nest," being sus- 

 pended from the tips of the long, drooping branches of an elm, 

 while the other, more ample, is hung from a horizontal fork of a 

 maple. It is larger at the mouth than the first, but, like it, is sus- 

 pended from stout strings, twisted round and round the twigs 

 and spanning the fork. For a long period the nature of this 

 peculiar gray hempen fibre which forms the bulk of the oriole's 

 nest was a puzzle. And even now that the tough material has 

 been identified principally as the dried strips of the stalks of 

 common milk-weed, which Nuttall observed the bird to tear from 

 the plants " and hackle into flax," I am not aware that the hint 

 of the oriole, as to its evident utility as a textile for the spinning- 

 wheel or loom, has ever been respected. A strip of this tough 

 dried bark, even when drawn firmly across the finger-nail, sepa- 

 rates into the finest of flax, almost reminiscent of the milk-weed 

 seed- floss in its white glossy sheen. 



The oriole's nests are not all made in the same mould nor of 

 the same material, but generally reflect the resources of the local- 

 ity in which they are built. There are numerous instances of 

 anomalous nests, in which the eager quest of the bird has been 



