220 NATURAL HISTORY REAPER. 



branch pendent. This nest would seem to cost more time 

 and skill than any other bird-structure. A peculiar flax- 

 like substance seems to be always sought after and always 

 found. The nest, when completed, assumes the form of a 

 large, suspended, gourd-shaped drop. The walls are thin 

 but firm, and proof against the most driving rain. The 

 mouth is hemmed or overhanded with horse-hair, and the 

 sides are usually sewed through and through with the 

 same. 



5. Not particular as to the matter of secrecy, the bird 

 is not particular as to material, so that it be of the nature 

 of strings or threads. A lady friend once told me that, 

 while working by an open window, one of these birds ap- 

 proached during her momentary absence, and, seizing a 

 skein of some kind of thread or yarn, made off with it to 

 its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast 

 in the branches, and, in the bird's efforts to extricate it, 

 got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all day, hut 

 was finally obliged to content herself with a few detached 

 portions. The fluttering strings were an eyesore to her 

 evor after, and, passing and repassing, she would pause to 

 give them a spiteful jerk, as much as to say, " There is 

 that confounded yarn that gave me so much trouble." 



John Burrouglis, 



BIRD-WAYS. 



1. I believe we allow that birds are very highly organ- 

 ized creatures — next to man, they say. We, with our 

 weary feet plodding always on the earth, our heavy arms 

 pinioned close to our sides, look at this live creature with 

 thinnest wing cutting the fine air ! We, slow in word, slow 

 in thought, look at this quivering flame, kindled by some 

 more passionate glance of Nature ! Next to man ? Yes, we 



