54 
NESTS AND EGGS OF 
which are so arranged as to protrude through the interstices of the outer. 
It is now the duty of the female, by a few bodily evolutions, to reduce 
the whole to form. This accomplished, the labor of building is resumed, 
and a cozy lining, composed of narrow strips of the inner hark of the 
wild grape-vine, is added. Often white and black horse-hairs take the 
place of these articles. That this species builds after the fashion described, 
is proved by actual observation, and also by the finding of abandoned 
nests which showed the outer, but not the inner arrangement. 
The nest represented in the Plate came from Atlantic Co., N. J. It 
was built between a forked branch of the common laurel. Externally, it 
is composed of decayed wood, inner hark of plants, silk of caterpillars, 
fragments of hornets’ nests, cocoons of spiders, etc. Internally, there is a 
thick lining of the inner bark of the wild grape-vine. The external 
diameter is three and a half inches ; internal, two and a half inches ; 
outside depth, two and a quarter, and inside, one and three-fourths inches. 
A comparison with specimens from Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania and 
Massachusetts, shows marked similarities in structure and details of com- 
position. 
In the collection of the Smithsonian Institution there is to be seen 
a nest which was obtained by Mr. Kennicott at the Cumberland House, 
on the Saskatchewan River. It is pensile, like all othei’s, but is almost 
exclusively built of pine-needles — a dry and hard material, difficult of 
management in the construction of such a domicile. M’^ith these are inter- 
mingled flax-like vegetable fibres, fine strijjs of bark, and fragments of 
moss. Within is jDlaced an inner nest comjjosed of strips of bark, pine 
leaves and fine, dry grasses. The external fabric is rather loosely put 
together — an unusual feature — but the inner portion, in the conq^actness 
and strength with which it was made, is in striking contrast. 
After the nest is finished, the female, on the ensuing day, and occa- 
sionally not until the expiration of the third or fourth, commences to lay 
her eggs, at the rate of one daily, until the entire complement of three or 
