158 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FARM 
of a primitive loom, such as women of certain tribes use 
to-day. Into this warp the threads of the woof are woven, 
by the woman with her fingers (aided, perhaps, by a crude 
wooden shuttle), by the bird with its slender beak. If anyone 
think that the weaving of the oriole is not well done, let him 
sit down with an empty 
nest and try to unravel all 
its threads! 
The fiber products used 
by the oriole are such as 
were first used by man for 
textile work—strips of 
bark, strands of bast fibers, 
long hairs from the tails 
of horses and cattle, grass 
stems and leaves; in short, 
anything that nature 
offered, and that had 
sufficient length, strength 
and pliancy. In our day, 
this bird has adopted one 
of the products of our 
spindles, cotton-wrapping 
twine, for the warp of its 
"Orel irikewevna, PE nest, doubtless finding, 
just as we have found, 
that this is superior for the purpose to anything that nature 
offers ready-made. Perhaps we thus repay an unacknow- 
ledged debt we may be owing this bird-weaver; for possibly 
some poetic soul in an age long gone may have watched 
an oriole at his labors, as Lowell did: 
“When oaken woods with buds are pink, 
“Then from the honeysuckle” gray 
The oriole with experienced quest 
Twitches the fibrous bark away 
The cordage of his hammock-nest,” 
