BIRDS’—NESTS 117 
bird structure. A peculiar flax-like substance seems 
to be always sought after and always found. The 
nest when completed assumes the form of a large, 
suspended gourd. The walls are thin but firm, 
and proof against the most driving rain. The 
mouth is hemmed or overhanded with horse-hair, 
and the sides are usually sewed through and through 
with the same. 
Not particular as to the matter of secrecy, the 
bird is not particular as to material, so that it be of 
the nature of strings or threads. A lady friend 
once told me that, while working by an open win- 
dow, one of these birds approached during her 
momentary absence, and, seizing a skein of some 
kind of thread or yarn, made off with it to its half- 
finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast 
in the branches, and, in the bird’s effort to extri- 
cate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away 
at it all day, but was finally obliged to content her- 
self with a few detached portions. The fluttering 
strings were an eyesore to her ever after, and, pass- 
ing and repassing, she would give them a spiteful 
jerk, as much as to say, “There is that confounded 
yarn that gave me so much trouble.” 
From Pennsylvania, Vincent Barnard (to whom 
I am indebted for other curious facts) sent me this 
interesting story of an oriole. He says a friend of 
his curious in such things, on observing the bird 
beginning to build, hung out near the prospective 
nest skeins of many-colored zephyr yarn, which the 
eager artist readily appropriated, He managed it 
