106 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 
the softest materials of the forest, bud scales, dried blossoms, veg- 
etable downs, and the delicate cottony substance which envelops 
the unfolding fronds of fern, with flexible skeletons of leaves as 
an external framework. The rim of the nest is generally con- 
tracted. But the most marked feature of the structure is its or- 
namentation; the whole exterior being closely thatched with small, 
brightly colored, greenish-gray lichen. 
The woolly, unrolling fronds of many of our ferns are a famil- 
iar feature of the spring woods, and offer at this season, and 
later, from the mature stems, a tempting crop to a number of our 
more diminutive birds, including the various warblers, the black 
and white creeper, and humming-bird, etc. 
This exquisitely soft, buff-colored material, for convenience 
called “fern-cotton,” however, is not all from the ferns. A close 
analysis with the magnifier discloses a diversity of elements. 
Some of it has been sheared from the mullein. The woolly 
bloom from young linden leaves and buds of white and red oak 
have already been identified in the substance, the stems of ever- 
lasting have furnished a generous share, and there are doubtless 
elements from a hundred other sources best known to the birds. 
Some of it, too, has already served in the winter snuggery of the 
horse-chestnut bud beneath the varnished scales. 
I once observed a tiny bird gleaning among the opening 
leaves, now webbed and festooned with the liberated soft yellow 
down, that most beautiful of all the spring’s revelations of burst- 
ing buds, so aptly figured by Lowell in the provincial tongue of 
Hosea Biglow: 
‘The gray hoss-chestnut’s leetle hands unfold 
Softer’n a baby’s be at three days old.” 
How irresistibly does this recall that companion couplet in the 
“ Pastoral line” from the same memorable paragraph, so true to 
the spirit of the vernal season: 
“Tn ellum shrouds the flashin’ hang -bird clings 
An’ for the summer vy’ge his hammock slings.” 
