ORCHARD ORIOLE. 
151 
erally speaking, the same, differing no more than those of any other in- 
dividuals belonging to one common species. The female appears always 
nearly the same. 
I have said that these birds construct their nests very differently from 
the Baltimores. They are so particularly fond of frequenting orchards, 
that scarcely one orchard in summer is •without them. They usually 
suspend their nest from the twigs of the apple tree ; and often from the 
extremities of the outward branches. It is formed exteriorly of a par- 
ticular species of long, tough and flexible grass, knit or sewed through 
and through in a thousand directions, as if actually done with a needle. 
An old lady of my acquaintance, to whom I was one day showing this 
curious fabrication, after admiring its texture for some time, asked me 
in a tone between joke and earnest, whether I did not think it possible 
to learn these birds to darn stockings. This nest is hemispherical, three 
inches deep by four in breadth ; the concavity scarcely two inches deep 
by tAvo in diameter. I had the curiosity to detach one of the fibres, or 
stalks, of dried grass from the nest, and found it to measure thirteen 
inches in length, and in that distance was thirty-four times hooked 
through and returned, winding round and round the nest ! The inside 
is usually composed of avooI, or the light downy appendages attached to 
the seeds of the Platanus occidentalism or button-wood, which form a 
very soft and commodious bed. Here and there the outward work is 
extended to an adjoining twig, round which it is strongly twisted, to 
give more stability to the whole, and prevent it from being overset by 
the wind. 
When they choose the long pendent branches of the weeping-willow 
to build in, as they frequently do, the nest, though formed of the same 
materials, is made much deeper, and of slighter texture. The circum- 
ference is marked out by a number of these pensile twigs, that descend 
on each side like ribs, supporting the whole ; their thick foliage, at the 
same time, completely concealing the nest from view. The depth in 
this case is increased to four or five inches, and the whole is made much 
slighter. These long pendent branches, being sometimes twelve and 
even fifteen feet in length, have a large sweep in the wind, and render 
the first of these precautions necessary, to prevent the eggs or young 
from being thrown out ; and the close shelter afforded by the remarkable 
thickness of the foliage, is, no doubt, the cause of the latter. Two of 
these nests, such as I have here described, are now lying before me, and 
exhibit not only art in the construction, but judgment in adapting their 
fabrication so judiciously to their particular situations. If the actions 
of birds proceeded, as some would have us believe, from the mere im- 
pulses of that thing called instinct, individuals of the same species would 
uniformly build their nest in the same manner, wherever they might 
happen to fix it ; but it is evident from these just mentioned, and a 
