i OSPREY. 
but, before its foundations were laid, the same want 
had to be supplied, and the primeval rocks then gave 
the bird their secure shelter, even as they still continue 
to do. Here, then, also the Osprey’s nest is built, 
upon the summit of an island crag, or on some strong 
natural fastness by the border of the ocean, the river, 
or the lake. 
Trees are also built on; and where these birds are 
unmolested or encouraged, as in some places they are, 
a colony is formed in the fishing season, sometimes 
amounting to two or three hundred pairs. The nest is 
placed at a height of from seven or eight to fifteen, 
and from that to fifty feet from the ground. If on a 
ruin, the highest point of the building is selected, 
generally the chimney——a necessary appendage even to 
a border castle. It is a cumbrous structure—an immense. 
pile of large sticks and branches, some of them as much 
as an inch and a half in diameter; the whole forming 
a mass easily discernible at the distance of half-a-mile, 
or more, and in quantity enough to fill a cart. How 
is it that it is not blown down, or blown to pieces by 
a gale of wind, is a difficulty which is not very easy 
to give a satisfactory solution of. It occasionally is 
heaped up to a height of four or five feet, and is from 
two to three feet in breadth, interlaced and compacted 
with sea-weed, stalks of corn, grass, or turf; the whole, 
in consequence of annual repairs and additions, which, 
even in human dwellings, so often make a house larger 
than it was originally intended to be, not to say unsightly, 
becoming by degrees of the character described above. 
The Osprey breeds at very different times of the 
year, in different latitudes—in January, February, March, 
and April, and the beginning of May; the _last- 
named month appears, in this country, to be the period 
