94 
POPULAR HISTOEY OP BIRDS. 
leaves were of course green and living. Subsequently how- 
ever they were blown down by a high wind, and being now 
withered, the nest appears enclosed between dead leaves.''^ 
Lieutenant Hutton describes a second nest which he found 
in the same garden : it contained an egg and two young 
birds nearly fledged. This nest was at the end of the 
branch of \\\QBhela [Semecarpiis sp.), and placed about two 
feet from the ground, and formed of raw cotton, cotton 
thread with a little flax, and lined with horse-hair alone. 
The leaves were stitched together partly with thread pre- 
pared by the bird, and partly with spun thread, and so care- 
fully was it concealed, that it v»'as difficult to find it. 
The species of Prinia, a genus first described by Dr. 
Horsfield, and containing small birds natives of India and 
the East Indian Archipelago, build nests with an ingenuity 
somewhat resembling that of the tailor-bird. A species of 
Sylvia, common in Southern Europe (the cysticola, 
Temm.), connects the sedges and other plants growing on 
the banks of ditches with real stitches also. This small 
bird forms, seemingly with her beak, small holes in the 
edges of the leaves of reeds and sedges, and through these 
holes she passes one or more threads, composed apparently 
of spider's web. These threads are not long enough to pass 
