HOUSE-MARTEN. 141 



Nature seldom works in vain, martens will breed on for several 

 years together in the same nest, where it happens to be well 

 sheltered and secure from the injuries of weather. The shell, 

 or crust, of the nest is a sort of rustic work, full of knobs and 

 protuberances on the outside ; nor is the inside of those that 

 I have examined smoothed with any exactness at all ; but is 

 rendered soft and warm, and fit for incubation, by a lining of 

 small straws, grasses, and feathers ; and sometimes by a bed 

 of moss, interwoven with wool. In this nest, they tread, or 

 engender, frequently during the time of building ; and the hen 

 lays from three to five white eggs. 



At first, when the young are hatched, and are in a naked 

 and helpless condition, the parent birds, with tender assiduity, 

 carry out what comes away from their young. Were it not 

 for this affectionate cleanliness, the nestlings would soon be 

 burnt up and destroyed, in so deep and hollow a nest, by their 

 own caustic excrement. In the quadruped creation, the same 

 neat precaution is made use of ; particularly among dogs and 

 cats, where the dams lick away what proceeds from their 

 young. But, in birds, there seems to be :i particular provision, 

 that the dung of nestlings is enveloped in a tough kind of 

 jelly, and, therefore, is the easier conveyed off, without soiling 

 or daubing. Yet, as Nature is cleanly in all her ways, the 

 young 1 perform this office for themselves in a little time, by 

 thrusting their tails out at the aperture of their nest. As the 

 young of small birds presently arrive at their jjX/x/a, or full 

 growth, they soon become impatient of confinement, and sit 

 all day with their heads out at the orifice, where the dams, by 

 clinging to the nest, supply them with food from morning to 

 night. For a time, the young are fed on the wing by their 

 parents ; but the feat is done by so quick and almost imper- 

 ceptible a sleight, that a person must have attended very 

 exactly to their motions, before he would be able to perceive 

 it. As soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, the 

 dams immediately turn their thoughts to the business of a 

 second brood ; while the first flight, shaken off and rejected 

 by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the birds 

 that are seen clustering and hovering, on sunny mornings and 

 evenings, round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of 

 churches and houses. These congregaiings usually begin to 

 take place about the first week in August ; and, therefore, we 

 may conclude, that by that time the first flight is pretty well 

 over. The young of this species do not quit their abodes all 

 together ; but the more forward birds get abroad some days 



