q; in bird land. 



VIII. 



NEST-HUNTING. 



NOTHING in Nature is more pregnant with 

 suggestion than the nest of a bird. The 

 story of one of these deftly woven dwellings in the 

 woods, if fully written, might prove almost as weird 

 and romantic as the history of a castle on the Rhine. 

 What madrigals, what paeans, have been sung, and 

 what victories celebrated, from the time the first 

 fibres were braided until the chirping nesthngs were 

 able to shift for themselves ! And, alas, how many 

 fond hopes have perished as well ! No doubt the 

 ruses and subterfuges employed to elude cunning 

 foes or ward off their murderous attacks, would fill 

 a volume of valuable information on military tactics. 

 One might write comedies or tragedies about the 

 nest-life of the birds that would be no less inter- 

 esting than realistic. More than that, the study of 

 these wonderful fabrics would virtually be a study 

 of the psychology of the feathered artisans, each 

 nest being an index of a special type of mind and 

 a measure of the bird's mental resources. As 

 William Hamilton Gibson has well said : " To know 

 the nidification and nest-hfe of a bir(5 is to get the 



