186 NATURAL HISTORY READER. 



these tiny walls ! Even the chrysalis is less amazing, for 

 its form always preserves some trace, however fantastic, of 

 the perfect insect, and it is but molting a skin ; but this 

 egg appears to the eye like a separate unit from some other 

 kingdom of nature, claiming more kindred with the very 

 stones than with feathery existence ; and it is as if a pearl 

 opened and an angel sang. 



6. The nest which is to contain these fair things is a 

 wondrous study also, from the coarse masonry of the robin 

 to the soft structure of the humming-bird, a baby-house 

 among nests. Among all created things, the birds come 

 nearest to man in their domesticity. Their unions are 

 usually in pairs, and for life ; and with them, unlike the 

 practice of most quadrupeds, the male labors for the young. 

 He chooses the locality of the nest, aids in its construc- 

 tion, and fights for it, if needful. He sometimes assists in 

 hatching the eggs. He feeds the brood with exhausting 

 labor, like yonder robin, whose winged picturesque day is 

 spent in putting worms into insatiable beaks, at the rate of 

 one morsel in every three minutes. He has to teach them 

 to fly, as among the swallows, or even to hunt, as among 

 the hawks. His life is anchored to his home. 



7. Yonder oriole fills with light and melody the thou- 

 sand branches of a neighborhood ; and yet the center for 

 all this divergent splendor is always that one drooping 

 dome upon one chosen tree. This he helped to build in 

 May, confiscating cotton as if he were a Union provost-mar- 

 shal, and singing many songs, with his mouth full of plun- 

 der ; and there he watches over his household, all through 

 the leafy June, perched often upon the airy cradle-edge, 

 and swaying with it in the summer wind. And from this 

 deep nest, after the pretty eggs are hatched, will he and 

 his mate extract every fragment of the shell, leaving it, 

 like all other nests, save those of birds of prey, clean and 

 pure, when the young are flown. This they do chiefly 



