36 
N£STS AND EGGS OF 
fourths in height. The cavity is generally three-fourths of an inch wide 
at the rim, and the same in depth. Specimens have been met with which 
were but half an inch deep, and others which showed a much greater 
depth, as well as external height. 
The nest in the Plate is from Comal County, Texas, and was found 
upon a heech-tree. It is composed almost entirely of vegetable wool from 
the poplar and oak, and is lined with a few small white feathers. Ex- 
ternally, there is a dense covering of bluish crustaceous lichens and 
brownish oak-tassels, which are held in position by saliva and strands of 
spider’s silk. It was placed upon a branch at an elevation of twenty feet 
above the ground. In height it measures one and three-fourth inches ; in 
external diameter, one and a half. The width of the cavity is three-fourths 
of an inch, and the depth about a half. 
A nest obtained in Lynn, Mass., in .luue, 1860, was saddled on a hori- 
zontal branch of an aj^ple-tree. It is woven of a soft woolly material, fine 
in texture, silky in appearance, and of the purest white color. Basally, 
it is strengthened with pieces of hark ; and laterally, with fine vegetable 
fibres. The whole exterior is beautifully covered with a compact coating 
of lichens. It measures one and a half inches in height, and two and 
one-fourth in external diameter. The cavity is shallow, and is seven- 
tenths of an inch in depth, and one in width. 
A very beautiful nest, as well as a marked deviation from the normal 
form, as far as materials of composition are concerned, was discovered in 
June, 1876, upon a branch of a red-oak which overhung a by-road, and 
within a few feet of a woollen factory. Scattered in the neighborhood was 
a lot of reddish shoddy, which had been discarded by the mill hands. 
The birds, it is evident, were not slow in perceiving the use to which this 
“waste” could he put. Accordingly they set to work, and, in a few days, 
had constructed a beautiful nest, at a saving of much labor and time. It 
might he thought there was a dearth of the usual materials, but this was 
not so, as a careful survey of the grounds soon satisfied us. Interiorly, 
this nest was entirely composed of this shoddy, while the exterior was 
