THE HOOPOE'S NEST. 
469 
cultivate friendly ties with other birds. Some 
they fear ; to the rest they are completely in- 
different. This may not seem a very favour- 
able character ; but we are no professional 
eulogists, and our business is to tell the truth. 
The reader must take the hoopoes, as he 
takes his fellow-men, just as he finds them ! 
But our object is to speak of the hoopoe's 
nest. Well, Avhen in search of a residence for 
his intended mate and expected family, he 
seeks the hollow trunk of an aged tree, or a 
hole in a wall, or the crevice of a rock. In 
Egypt, he builds almost always in the holes 
of the walls, and often in those of inhabited 
houses. In Europe he will resort, at need, 
to any tolerably sheltered field or corner ; 
and in the steppes he sometimes conceals 
his nest in the carcasses of animals — 
Pallas found one, with seven young, 
in the thoracic cavity of a human 
HOOPOES. 
