﻿182 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 



titmice, perhaps, excepted, but which remains to be dis- 

 covered. The nest of this bird, however, is equally 

 well secured, being made of white moss and liverwort, 

 curiously and firmly wove together with wool, covered 

 at the top, with only a small hole on the side, and lined 

 with a prodigious quantity of feathers." Bewick, how- 

 ever, is more to our present purpose : — " The nest of 

 this bird is singularly curious and elegant, being of a 

 long oval form, with a small hole on the side, near the 

 top, as an entrance ; its outside is formed of moss, 

 woven or matted together with the tree and the stone 

 lichens, and fixed with fine thread of the same silken 

 material : from the thatch the rain trickles off without 

 penetrating it." We may here trace a further, although 

 a slight advance to the pendulous structure, in the 

 words marked by italics ; and equally gradual is the 

 progress towards the pendulous, or purse shaped, form, 

 indicated by the fact of the marsh titmouse making the 

 bottom of its nest (which is built in the hollow of a de- 

 cayed tree) u larger than the entrance." * Of the nest 

 of the bearded titmouse, although by no means a very 

 rare native bird, we have not met with a description 

 by British writers ; but, if either of the two following 

 accounts are in any degree correct, they will sufficiently 

 answer our purpose. Dr. Latham says, u as to the 

 nest and its construction, we are in no certainty about 

 it : one brought to me for such, was composed of very 

 fine materials, suspended between three reeds drawn 

 together. Kramer says it makes the nest among the 

 willows, in the shape of a purse, and of downy mate- 

 rials." t Now, it is clear, that as these birds build 

 among reeds, whose stems are never forked, their nest 

 cannot, by any possibility, repose upon a base. The 

 only way in which it can be attached must be by being 

 entwined, or interlaced, round three or four perpendicular 



* Latham's General History of Birds, vol. vii. p. 252. 



+ This is the structure of the nests fabricated by many of the European 

 aquatic warblers of the genus Curruca, several of which will be found 

 figured in Sepp's Birds of the Netherlands. 



