PENDULINE TIT. 15 



horizontally or obliquely from top to bottom. It is in 

 some respects like that of the Long-tailed Tit, but it 

 is more delicately and skilfully built, and it is particu- 

 larly distinguished from it by the manner in which it 

 is suspended. This nest does not rest upon the branches 

 or trunk of the tree; it is quite free, and always sus- 

 pended from the upper part of the flexible branches of 

 aspens, willows, tamarisks, and other trees or shrubs 

 which grow on the borders of rivers or marshes. ■ This 

 is why some ornithologists call the Remitz, Penduline, 

 fParus nidum suspendens.J 



When the nest of the Remitz is turned on one side, 

 with the opening above, it resembles somewhat a woollen 

 sock both in shape and material; so much so, that the 

 peasants in the neighbourhood of Nimes have given the 

 bird the name of Debassayre, (stocking-weaver.) This 

 little architectural chef-d'-ceuvre is more or less length- 

 ened according to the age and other circumstances of 

 the bird. The most ordinary form is that of a bag- 

 pipe, of which the pipe has been shortened. 



M. Eequien, of Avignon, sent me from the neighbour- 

 hood of his native town a nest of this form, which is 

 very characteristic. It was taken on the borders of the 

 Rhone, suspended to the bough of a young aspen, by 

 a rather long and narrow cord. It had the following 

 dimensions: — Height seventeen cents.; transverse diameter 

 eleven cents; length of lobby three cents, and a half; 

 diameter of opening three cents.; thickness of edges four 

 millemetres. It weighed fifty-five grammes. Sometimes 

 the lobby does not exist, and the nest then takes the 

 figure of a wallet, an egg, or a pear, nearly like that 

 of the Long-tailed Tit. 



The nest is attached and suspended with fibres of 

 hemp, flax, nettles, stalks of grasses, and even with little 



