ORCHARD ORIOLE. 
189 
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 shewing 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 two 
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 the light downy appen- 
dages attached to the seeds of the Plat anus occidentalism 
or button-wood, which form a very soft and commo- 
dious 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 circumfe- 
rence 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, com- 
pletely 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 con- 
struction, but judgment in adapting their fabrication 
