Jides ]\Iic//chf on Birds. 



ment is clay-built, like that of the swallow ; or lath and plaster, 

 so to speak, like an old country house, as is the fashion of the 

 magpie; or a platform of rude sticks, like the first rudiment of 

 a basket up in the tree-branches, as that of the wood-pigeon: 

 she may be a carpenter like the woodpecker, a tunneller like 

 the sandmartin ; or she may knead and glue together the 

 materials of her nest, till they resemble thick felt ; but in all this 

 she is exactly what the great Creator made her at first, equally 

 perfect in skill, and equally undeviating year after year. This 

 is very wonderful, so that we may be quite sure that the sparrow's 

 nest, which David remarked in the house of God, was exactly 

 the same as the sparrow built in the days of the blessed Saviour, 

 when He, pointing to that bird, made it a proof to man that 

 God's Providence ever watches over him. 



Nevertheless, with this unaltered and unalterable working 

 after one pattern, in every species of bird, there is a choice or 

 an adaptation of material allowed : thus the bird will, within 

 certain limits, select that which is fittest for its purpose, pro- 

 ducing, however, in the end, precisely the same effect. I will tell 

 you what Jules Michelet, a French writer, who loves birds as we 

 do, writes on this subject: — " The bird in building its nest," he 

 says, -"makes it of that beautiful cup-like or cradle form by 

 pressing it down, kneading it and shaping it upon her own 

 breast." He says, as I have just told you, that the mother-bird 

 builds, and that the he-bird is her purveyor. He fetches in the 

 materials: grasses, 'mosses, roots, or twigs, singing many a 

 song between whiles; and she arranges all with loving reference ; 

 first, to the delicate (tgg which must be bedded in soft material ; 

 then to the little one which, coming from the (tgg naked, must 



