248 THE NEST. 
Let us recollect, at the outset, that this charming object, so much 
more delicate than words can describe, owes everything to art, to skill, 
to calculation. The materials are generally of the rudest, and not 
always those which the artist would have preferred. The instruments 
are very defective. The bird has neither the squirrel’s hand nor the 
beaver’s tooth. Having only his bill and his foot (which by no 
means serves the purpose of a hand), it seems that the nest should be 
to him an insoluble problem. The specimens now before my eyes are for 
the most part composed of a tissue or covering of mosses, small flexible 
branches, or long vegetable filaments; but it is less a weaving than 
a condensation ; a felting of materials, blended, beaten, and welded 
together with much exertion and perseverance; an act of great 
labour and energetic operation, for which the bill and the claw would 
be insufficient. The tool really used is the bird’s own body—his 
breast—-with which he presses and kneads the materials until he has 
rendered them completely pliable, has thoroughly mixed them, and 
subdued them to the general work. 
And within, too, the implement which determines the circular 
form of the nest is no other than the bird’s body. It is by con- 
stantly turning himself about, and ramming the wall on every side, 
that he succeeds in shaping the circle. 
Thus, then, his house is his very person, his form, and his im- 
mediate effort—I would say, his suffering. The result is only obtained 
by a constantly repeated pressure of his breast. There is not one of 
these blades of grass but which, to take and retain the form of a 
