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, {Hypnwn 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 wdth the same salivary cement, while they are 
bruised fiat at the same time, so as to correspond with the smoothness 
of the surface over which they are laid. This final coating, however. 
