160 
NESTS AND EGGS OF 
Events now follow each other in close succession. Pairing being 
solemnized, the birds seek themselves out a spot for a home. Low growths 
are usually selected. In Texas, thick mezquite-bushes and live oaks, and, 
in Louisiana, orange hedges, bramble and blackberry bushes, and, occasion- 
ally, the lower branches of trees are occupied. The height above the 
ground seldom exceeds ten feet, the usual elevation being from four to five 
feet. A crotch is generally the recipient of the fabric, except in cases 
where tangled bushes are used, when their hooked and prong-like branches 
serve as girders of support. 
By the first of May, everything being in readiness, the ground-floor 
of the domicile is laid, and little by little the walls are raised, through 
the cool, united efforts of the two patient workers. By no means as 
artistic as some we have already described, yet it is, withal, a neat, com- 
fortable and staid structure. The materials of composition are not at 
all varied, but usually consist of dried grass, vegetable stems, leaves in 
small quantities, fine rootlets, and silk of caterpillars, on the exterior, and 
hoise-hairs, or the slender culms of grasses, on the interior. In many 
instances, the stems are clothed with long hairs, which serve as points of 
attachment to the cottony and silken fibres Avhich bind the coarser sub- 
stances together. A nest before us presents to the unaided vision a slight 
lustrous appearance from the vast numbers of membranous dessepiments or 
partitions — relics of seed-vessels that are adherent to most of the stems. 
The cavity has an even, unragged margin, which is due to the great pains 
taken in the disposition of the flaxen fibres which, in a great measure, 
compose it. On the whole, the outside is remarkably smooth and uniform, 
while the interior, with its circularly-arranged layers, is a perfect model 
of elegance and comfort. The height of the nest which we have figured, 
and the same may be reasonably true of all such structures, is two and 
one-tenth inches, and the width, two and nine-tenths. The opening is one 
and nine-tenths inches in diameter, and nearly the same in depth. This 
nest w’as collected in Comal County, Texas, on the ninth of May, 1881, 
and is a fair representation of the typical structure. In the drawung it 
