How Animals Work. 



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rambles ; in others, they are placed high up on the 

 trees, but only in those parts of the forest where there 

 is an open space entirely shaded by overhanging foliage. 

 As will be readily conceived, in whatever situations 

 they are met with, they at all times form a remarkable 

 and conspicuous feature in the landscape. Although 

 the nest is constantly disturbed by the wind, and liable 

 to be shaken when the tree is disturbed, so secure 

 does the inmate consider itself from danger or intru- 

 sion of any kind that I have frequently captured the 

 female while sitting on her eggs ; a feat that may always 

 be accomplished by carefully placing the hand over 

 the entrance that is, if it can be detected, to effect 

 which no slight degree of close prying and examina- 

 tion is necessary. The nest is formed of the inner 

 bark of trees, intermingled with green moss, which 

 soon vegetates ; sometimes dried grasses and fibrous 

 roots form part of the materials of which it is com- 

 posed, and it is warmly lined with feathers." 



The different species of Australian Honey-eaters 

 are all dainty architects, who build hanging or pensile 

 nests. That of the Singing Honey-eater, whose song 

 Gould compares to the song of the missel thrush, is built 

 in New South Wales, of the very finest dry stalks that 

 the bird can find, lined with fibrous roots, matted to- 

 gether with spiders' webs, and fastened by its rim to 

 the slender, pendulous twigs of the beautiful myall 

 tree (Acacia penduld). In Western Australia we find 

 this bird using different material, while preserving the 

 general structural features of the nest. It collects 

 grasses, which, although green when first woven into 

 the nest, soon become white and dry. With the grasses 



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