BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
245 
chestnut, stems of knotweed, leaves, fragments of fungus, interwoven with 
an excess of flax-like fabrics and vegetable wool. The inside is lined with 
divers shreds of dandelion and thistle, neatly and compactly felted. The 
external diameter and height are each two and a half inches, and the 
cavity two at the rim and the same in depth. 
A nest from Union County, Pa., nearly two hundred miles distant from 
the former locality, varies materially in size and in the character of com- 
posing materials. When iound it was placed between two horizontal twigs 
joined at right angles to another, to which it was firmly attached by 
hempen fibres. On the right of the nest further security was afforded by 
a vertical twig, to which it was bound by similar cords. Fine roots of 
grasses, spiders’ webs, cotton string, twisted and untwisted yellowish hempen 
cords, nicely and evenly felted, constituted the exterior. Within there 
was a lining of yellow rootlets and white horse-hairs, the latter in excess. 
The nest is hemispherical, and measures three inches in width, and the 
same in height. The cavity is two inches in diameter and of equal depth. 
This nest was discovered about the fifteenth of August, and contained a 
brood of tender fledglings. 
Another fabric is somewhat exceptional^ in position. It rests upon a 
horizontal limb, and is still further supported by three inclined twigs on 
the one side, to which it is fastened by strings and the ravellings of 
colored cottony fabrics. The exterior is made of raw cotton, animal wool, 
hempen strings, vegetable fibres, rootlets of grasses, rather ingeniously 
interwoven. Interiorly there is a strange commingling of wool and horse- 
hairs. The bottom of the cavity is hardly covered, the twig which forms 
the basis of the structure being clearly discernible. In external diameter 
it measures two and a half inches, and in depth but two; the width and 
depth of the cavity are identical, being about one and three-fourths inches. 
In New England, according to Samuels, the nest of this species is 
built of soft strips of the cedar and grape-vine bark, which are elaborately 
woven into a compact structure around a deep hollow, which is softly lined 
with the down of thistles, and, occasionally, with a few feathers. 
