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108 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 
Remembering Wilson's investigations into the similarly com- 
pact nest-fabric of the orchard oriole, from which he disentan- 
gled a strand of grass only thirteen inches long, but which in 
that distance was thirty-four times hooked through and returned 
in the meshes, the relation of which fact led an old lady acquaint- 
ance of his to ask whether “it would not be possible to teach the 
birds to darn stockings,” I was led to test the darning skill of 
the hang-bird which uses the horse-hair in true regulation style. 
With much labor I succeeded in following a single hair through 
fourteen passes from outside to interior in the length of about 
ten inches, which I was then quite willing to assume as an aver- 
age as to the total, which would doubtless have reached at least 
thirty stitches. When this is multiplied by the hundreds of simi- 
lar sinews with which the body of the nest is compacted some 
idea may be formed of its strength. 
Two types of the nest, both beautiful specimens, are now be- 
fore me. One, a true example of the “hang-nest,” being sus- 
pended from the tips of the Jong, drooping branches of an elm, 
while the other, more ample, is hung from a horizontal fork of a 
maple. It is larger at the mouth than the first, but, like it, is sus- 
pended from stout strings, twisted round and round the twigs 
and spanning the fork. For a long period the nature of this 
peculiar gray hempen fibre which forms the bulk of the oriole’s 
nest was a puzzle. And even now that the tough material has 
been identified principally as the dred strips of the stalks of 
common milk-weed, which Nuttall observed the bird to tear from 
the plants “and hackle into flax,” I am not aware that the hint 
of the oriole, as to its evident utility as a textile for the spinning- 
wheel or loom, has ever been respected. A strip of this tough 
dried bark, even when drawn firmly across the finger-nail, sepa- 
rates into the finest of flax, almost reminiscent of the milk-weed 
seed- floss in its white glossy sheen. 
The oriole’s nests are not all made in the same mould nor of 
the same material, but generally reflect the resources of the local- 
ity in which they are built. There are numerous instances of 
anomalous nests, in which the eager quest of the bird has been 
