BULLOCK’S ORIOLE. 681 
before us. Each is differently constructed; and while all three 
evince wonderful powers of weaving, one of them in particular is 
astonishingly i na og displaying the united accomplishments of 
weaving and basket making. Before proceeding, we may premise 
that the idea of the sn is a sort of bag or purse, closely woven 
of slender pliant substances like strips of fibrous bark, grasses, 
hair, twine, etc., open at the top, and hung by its rim in the fork 
of a twig or at the very end of a floating spray. 
The first nest was built in a pine tree; and if the reader will 
call to mind the stiff nature of the terminal branchlets, each bear- 
ing a thick bunch of long straight needle-like leaves, he will see 
that the birds must have been put to their wits’ end, though very 
likely he will not be able to guess how they made shift with such 
unpromising materials. They made up their minds to use the 
leaves themselves in the nest, and with this idea they commenced 
by bending down a dozen or twenty of the stiff slender filaments, 
and tying their ends together at the bottom. If you have ever 
seen a basket maker at work, with his upright pieces already in 
place, but not yet fixed together with the circular ones, you will 
understand exactly what the birds had thus accomplished. They 
had a secure framework of nearly parallel and upright leaves nat- 
urally attached to the bough above, and tied together below by 
the bird’s art. This skeleton of the nest was about nine inches 
long, and four across the top, running to a point below; and the 
‘subsequent weaving of the nest upon this basis was an easy mat- 
ter to the birds, though, if one were to examine a piece of the 
fabric cut away from the nest, he could hardly believe that the thin 
yet tough and strong felting had not been made by some shoddy 
eontractor for the supply of army clothing. Yet it was all de- 
signed in a bird’s little brain, and executed with skilful bill and 
feet. 
Perhaps the young birds that were raised in the second nest did 
not appreciate their romantic surroundings, but their parents were 
evidently a sentimental pair. If they did not do their courting 
“under the mistletoe,” at any rate they built a cozy home there, 
tinting the sober reality of married life with the rosy hue of their 
earlier dreams. The nest was hung in a bunch of the Arceutho- 
bium oxycedri, an abundant epiphytic plant that on the western 
wilds represents the mistletoe, and recalls the cherished memories 
of holiday gatherings. The nest was a cylindrical purse some 
