THRUSH. 



511 



*No writer, with whom I am acquainted, has taken notice of the sin- 

 gular ingenuity of the workmanship of the Thrush's nest. Interiorly it is 

 about the form and size of a large breakfast tea-cup, being as uniformly 

 rounded, and, though not polished, almost as smooth. For this little 

 cup the parent-birds lay a massive foundation of moss, chiefly the pro- 

 liferous and the fern-leaved feather moss, (Hypnum proliferum, and 

 H. Jilicinum^) or any other which is sufficiently tufted. As the struc- 

 ture advances, the tufts of moss are brought into a rounded wall by 

 means of grass stems, wheat, straw, or roots, which are twined with it 

 and with one another up to the brim of the cup, where a thicker band 

 of the same materials is hooped round like the mouth of a basket. 

 The rounded form of this frame-work is produced by the bird measuring 

 it, at every step of the process, with its body, particularly with the part 

 extending from the thigh to the chin ; and when any of the straws or 

 other materials will not readily conform to this guage, they are care- 

 fully glued into their proper places by means of saliva, a circumstance 

 which may be seen in many parts of the same nest if carefully examined. 

 When the shell, as it may be called, is completed in this manner, the 

 bird begins the interior masonry by spreading pellets of horse or cow- 

 dung on the basket-work of moss and straw, beginning at the bottom, 

 which is intended to be the thickest, and proceeding gradually from the 

 central point. This material, however, is too dry to adhere of itself 

 with sufficient firmness to the moss, and on this account it is always 

 laid on with the saliva of the bird as a cement ; yet it must require no 

 little patience in the little architect to lay it on so very smoothly, with 

 no other implement than its narrow-pointed bill. It would, indeed, 

 puzzle any of our best workmen to work so uniformly smooth with 

 such a tool ; but from the frame being nicely prepared, and by using 

 only small pellets at a time, which are spread out with the upper part 

 of the bill, the work is rendered easier. That it is horse-dung which 

 is preferred for this purpose, (though we have also seen cow-dung 

 used,) may be easily ascertained, by comparing a piece of the dry drop- 

 pings found in pastures with the inner wall of the nest, which, like dry 

 horse-dung, returns no smell, whereas cow-dung, though exposed to 

 the sun for months, continues to retain a musky smell, very similar to 

 Indian ink. 



On this wall being finished, the birds employ, for the inner coating, 

 little short slips of rotten wood, chiefly that of the willow ; and these 

 are firmly glued on with the same salivary cement, while they are 

 bruised flat at the same time, so as to correspond with the smoothness 

 of the surface over which they are laid. This final coating, however, 



