182 
ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 
\ 
titmice^ perhaps^ excepted, but which remains to be dis- 
covered. The nest of this bird, however, is equally 
well secured, being made of white moss and liverwort, 
curiously and firmly wove together ivith wool, covered 
at the top, with only a small hole on the side, and lined 
with a prodigious quantity of feathers.” Hewick, how- 
ever, is more to our present purpose : — “ The nest of 
this bird is singularly curious and elegant, being of a 
long oval form, with a small hole on the side, near the 
top, as an entrance ; its outside is formed of moss, 
woven or matted together with the tree and the stone 
lichens, and fixed with fine thread of the same silken 
material : from the thatch the rain trickles off without 
penetrating it.” We may here trace a further, although 
a slight advance to the pendulous structure, in the 
words marked by italics ; and equally gradual is the 
progress towards the pendulous, or purse shaped, form, 
indicated by the fact of the marsh titmouse making the 
bottom of its nest (which is built in the hollow of a de- 
cayed tree) “ larger than the entrance.”* Of the nest 
of die bearded titmouse, although by no means a very 
rare native bird, we have not met with a descripdon 
by British writers; but, if either of the two following 
accounts are in any degree correct, they will sufliciently 
answer our purpose. Dr. Latham says, “ as to the 
nest and its construction, we are in no certainty about 
it : one bronght to me for such, was composed of very 
fine materials, suspended between three reeds drawn 
together. Kramer says it makes the nest among the 
willows, in the shape of a purse, and of downy mate- 
rials.” t Now, it is clear, that as these birds build 
among reeds, whose stems are never ■ forked, their nest 
cannot, by any possibility, repose upon a base. The 
only way in which it can lie attached must be by being 
entwined, or interlaced, round three or four perpendicular 
• Latham’s General History of Birds, vol, vii. p. 252. 
+ This is the structure of the nests fabricated by many of the European 
aquatic warblers of the genus Ctirruca, several of which will be found 
figured in Scpp’s Birds of the Netherlands. 
i 
