is lost in beginning to weave their future home. It is a great mistake to suppose that 

 birds of the same species always build in the same way. Though their nests have a 

 general resemblance in style of architecture, they differ greatly according to their situa- 

 tion, to the time the birds have before the nest must be used for the reception of the 

 eggs, and often, we are tempted to think, according to the taste and skill of the 

 builders. In their work of this sort, birds show a remarkable power of selection, as 

 well as of adapting themselves to circumstances; in proof of which we have only to 

 examine the three beautiful specimens now lying before us. Each is differently con- 

 structed; and while all three evince wonderful powers of weaving, one of them in 

 particular is astonishingly ingenious, displaying the united accomplishments of weaving 

 and basket-making. Before proceeding, we may premise that the idea of the nest is a 

 sort of bag or purse, closely w^oven of slender pliant substances, like strips of fibrous 

 bark, grass, hair, twine, etc., open at the top, and hung by its rim in the fork of a 

 twig or at the very end of a floating spray. 



"The first nest was built in a pine tree; and if the reader will call to mind the 

 stiff nature of the terminal branchlets, each bearing a thick bunch of long, straight, 

 needle-like leaves, he will see that the birds must have been put to their wits' end, 

 thotigh very likely he will not be able to guess how they made shift with such un- 

 promising materials. They made up their minds to use the leaves themselves in the 

 nest, and with this idea they commenced by bending down a dozen or twenty of the 

 stiff, slender filaments, and tying their ends together at the bottom. If you have ever 

 seen a basket-maker at work, with his upright pieces already in place, but not yet fixed 

 together with the circular ones, you will understand exactly what the birds had thus 

 accomplished. They had a secure frame-work of nearly parallel and upright leaves 

 naturally attached to the bough above, and tied together below by the bird's art. 

 This skeleton of the nest was about nine inches long, and four across the top, running 

 to a point below ; and the subsequent weaving of the nest upon this basis was an easy 

 matter to the birds, though, if one were to examine a piece of the fabric cut away from 

 the nest, he could hardly believe that the thin yet tough and strong felting had not 

 been made by some shoddy contractor for the supply of army clothing. Yet it was all 

 designed in a bird's little brain, and executed with skilfuU bill and feet. 



"Perhaps the young birds that were raised in the second nest did not appreciate 

 their romantic surroundings, but their parents were evidently a sentimental pair. If 

 they did not do their courting 'under the mistletoe,' at any rate they built a cosy home 

 there, tinting the sober reality of married life with the rosy hue of their earlier dreams. 

 The nest was hung in a bunch of the Arceuthobium oxycedri, an abundant epiphytic 

 plant, that on the western wilds represents the mistletoe, and recalls the cherished 

 memories of holiday gatherings. The nest was a cylindrical purse, some six inches deep 

 and four broad, hanging to several sprays of the mistletoe, which were partly inter- 

 woven with the nest to form a graceful drapery. The felting material was long, soft, 

 vegetable fibre of a glistening silvery lustre, in artistic contrast with the dark-hued 

 foliage. A few hairs were sewn through and through, for gi-eater security, and the 

 pretty fabric was lined with a matting of the softest possible plant-down, like that of 

 a button-wood or an Asckpias. 



