350 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



2. Slender catkins, often with the buds and twig ends 

 (of perhaps hazel), throughout the whole bottom and 

 sides, making it thick but open and light, mixed with 



(3) milkweed silk, L e. fibres like flax, but white, 

 being bleached, also in sides and rim, some of it almost 

 threadlike, white with some of the dark epidermis. 

 From the pods ? * 



4. Thin and narrow strips of grape-vine bark, chiefly 

 in the rim and sides for three quarters of an inch down, 

 and here and there throughout. 



5. Wads of apparently brown fern wool, mixed with 

 the last three. 



6. Some finer pale-brown and thinner shreds of bark 

 within the walls and bottom, apparently not grape. If 

 this were added to the grape, these five materials would 

 be not far from equally abundant. 



7. Some very fine pale-brown wiry fibres for a lining, 

 just above the pappus and somewhat mixed with it, 

 perhaps for coolness, being springy. 



Directly beneath the pappus were considerable other 

 shreds of grape and the other bark, short and broken. 

 In the rim and sides some cotton ravellings and some 

 short shreds of fish-line or crow-fence. A red maple leaf 

 within the bottom ; a kernel of corn just under the lining 

 of fibres (perhaps dropped by a crow or blackbird or 

 jay or squirrel while the nest was building). A few short 

 lengths of stubble or weed stems in the bottom and 

 sides. A very little brown wool, like, apparently, that in 

 the nest last described, which may be brown fern wool. 



1 No, I am about certain, from comparison, that it is the fibres of the 

 bark of the stem. Vide 19th inst. 



