484 
THE GOLDFINCH'S NEST. 
THE MAGPIE. 
pactness and neatness; internally 
The magpie has long been con- 
sidered a bird of omen, and the 
reader will remember the popular 
couplet : — 
" One for sorrow, two for mirth. 
Three for a wedding, and four for a 
birth." 
It was thought probable that 
the hearts of the unmated men 
could not fail to be moved when 
they saw the swallows clinging out- 
side their happy nests, and patiently 
feeding their hungry fledgelings. 
THE GOLDFINCH. 
But let us examine a little more 
in detail the nests of our common 
English birds. To begin with the 
goldfinch's. Is it not a marvel of 
delicate and ingenious construction, 
a fairy piece of work, light, shapely 
and graceful, yet perfectly secure ? 
It is literally a cradle, as Mudie 
remarks; and the young are rocked 
by the winds in their hatching- 
place nearly as much as they will 
be afterwards on the tiill and flex- 
ible stems on which they are to 
find their food. Externally it is 
constructed of green lichens, mosses, 
small roots, dried-up stubble, feath- 
ers, and blades of grass, all twined 
together by cocoon-filaments, and 
interwoven with the utmost com- 
it is lined with thistle-down, the soft 
