The Hutton Vireo 
to the bird-lover, looks him earnestly in the eye, as though he would 
determine the intruder’s mission there.” 
Lives there a man with soul so dead that it is not ravished by the 
sight of a Vireo’s nest? I will admit, if you like, that an appreciation of 
birds’ eggs is the survival of the monkey in us, but an appreciation of the 
consummate elegance of a Hutton Vireo’s nest is only the tribute which 
one artist soul must pay to another. Hutton Vireo is Artium Magister. 
An example before me is a three-quarter sphere composed of sycamore 
down, and the familiar 
gray-green usnea (a 
lichen, of course, but we 
all call it “moss”) lashed 
together with cobwebs. 
The edges are made fast 
to forking twigs of live 
oak, and are exquisitely 
rounded, while a con¬ 
venient twig below sup¬ 
ports the bottom of the 
nest in graceful security. 
The nesting hollow, 
almost as deep as it is 
wide, is daintily lined 
with the finest of dried 
grasses. Its dimensions 
are three inches in width 
by two and three-quar¬ 
ters in depth, outside; 
and two and three- 
eighths in width by one 
and three-quarters in 
depth inside. 
Another nest, in a bay tree, lacks the supporting twig below, and is 
of a rather bolder, more open construction. Conspicuous cinctures of 
vegetable fiber lash, or undergird, the entire structure, externally; while 
in the open meshes of the dried usnea are embedded decorating fragments 
of paper—a linen envelope, I should judge—torn to convenient shreds. 
The effect of the whole is as striking as that of any Red-eye or Solitary. 
The eggs, normally four in number, are pure ovate as to shape, pure 
dull white as to color, and are coarsely though sparingly sprinkled about 
the larger end with deep sepia or purplish black. As to the why of this 
color-pattern, which, with variations as to shading and abundance runs 
§ 8 o 
