138 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



straws, grasses, and feathers ; and sometimes by a bed of 

 moss interwoven with wool. In this nest they tread, or 

 engender, frequently during the time of building ; and the 

 hen lays from three to five white eggs. 



At first when the young are hatched, and are in a 

 naked and helpless condition, the parent birds, with 

 tender assiduity, carry out what comes away from their 

 young. Was it not for this affectionate cleanliness the 

 nestlings would soon be burnt up, and destroyed in so 

 deep and hollow a nest, by their own caustic excrement. 

 In the quadruped creation the same neat precaution is 

 made use of; particularly among dogs and cats, where 

 the dams lick away what proceeds from their young. But 

 in birds there seems to be a particular provision, that the 

 dung of nestlings is enveloped into a tough kind of jelly, 

 and therefore is the easier conveyed off without soiling or 

 daubing. Yet, as nature is cleanly in all her ways, the 

 young perform this office for themselves in a little time by 

 thrusting their tails out at the aperture of their nest. As 

 the young of small birds presently arrive at their ^Xikm, or 

 full growth, they soon become impatient of confinement, 

 and sit all day with their heads out at the orifice, where 

 the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them with food 

 from morning to night. For a time the young are fed on 

 the wing by their parents ; but the feat is done by so 

 quick and almost imperceptible a sleight, that a person 

 must have attended very exactly to their motions before 

 he would be able to perceive it. As soon as the young 

 are able to shift for themselves, the dams immediately 

 turn their thoughts to the business of a second brood : 

 while the first flight, shaken off and rejected by their 

 nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the birds that 

 are seen clustering and hovering on sunny mornings and 

 evenings round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of 

 churches and houses. These congregatings usually begin 

 to take place about the first week in August ; and there- 

 fore we may conclude that by that time the first flight is 

 pretty well over. The young of this species do not quit 

 their abodes all together ; but the more forward birds get 



