64 
BIRD CRADLES. 
ance of his to ask whether “ it would not 
be possible to teach the birds to darn 
stockings,” I was led to test the darn¬ 
ing skill of the hang-bird which uses 
the horse-hair in true regulation style. 
With much labor I succeeded in follow¬ 
ing a single hair through fourteen 
passes from outside to interior in the 
length of about ten inches, which I was 
then quite willing to assume as an aver¬ 
age as to the total, which would doubt¬ 
less have reached at least thirty stitches. 
When this is multiplied by the hundreds 
of similar sinews with which the body 
of the nest is compacted some idea may 
be formed of its strength. 
Two types of the nest, both beautiful 
specimens, are now before me. One, a 
true example of the “ hang-nest,” being 
suspended from the tips of the long, 
drooping branches of an elm, while the 
other, more ample, is hung from a hori¬ 
zontal fork of a maple. It is larger at 
the mouth than the first, but like it is 
suspended from stout strings, twisted 
round and round the twigs and spanning 
the fork. For a long period the nature 
of this peculiar gray hempen fibre which 
forms the bulk of the oriole’s nest was a 
puzzle. And even now that the tough 
material has been identified principally 
as the dried strips of the stalks of com¬ 
mon milkweed, which Nuttall observed 
the bird to tear from the plants “ and 
hackle into flax,” I am not aware that 
the hint of the oriole, as to its evident 
utility as a textile for the spinning-wheel 
or loom, has ever been respected. A 
strip of this tough dried bark, even when 
drawn firmly across the finger-nail, 
separates into the finest of flax, almost 
reminiscent of the milkweed seed-floss 
in its white glossy sheen. 
The oriole’s nests are not all made in 
the same mould nor of the same mate¬ 
rial, but generally reflect the resources 
of the locality in which they are built. 
There are numerous instances of anom¬ 
alous nests, in which the eager quest 
of the bird has been artfully humored 
by the housewife, or the ornithological 
curio hunter, resulting in works of ques¬ 
tionable art sophisticated with all man¬ 
ner of contaminations—rags and rib¬ 
bons, tape and lampwick, or perhaps pa¬ 
triotic pendants flying the national colors 
of red, white, and blue, in particolored 
zones and strips of red flannel. In con¬ 
trast to these I cannot but revert with 
relief to that beautiful fancy which Chad¬ 
wick has woven into one of these beau¬ 
tiful nests, and in which the intertwined 
golden and silvery locks of childhood 
and old age tell a pathetic story. 
In one case at least the hint of the 
oriole would appear to have been appre¬ 
ciated, his nest having first introduced 
to the public the utility of the black 
flexible compound which is so common 
an ingredient toward the centre of our 
costly “ curled-hair ” mattresses. 
During a recent Southern trip I noted 
one or two of these pendulous mat¬ 
tresses of the oriole, their black color 
giving little hint to the observer of the 
gray Southern moss of which they are 
really constructed. In the Long Island 
Historical Rooms there is a specimen 
of one of these Southern nests, fully 
eighteen inches long, composed entirely 
of this glossy black fibre — a veritable 
piece of hair-cloth to all appearances, 
no single thread, I believe, showing its 
familiar gray complexion, the entire ma¬ 
terial having been presumably abstracted 
from the drying-poles of the “ moss gath¬ 
erers,” beneath whose arts the Southern 
moss is converted into “ genuine curled 
hair” by the rotting and subsequent 
removal of the gray covering, leaving 
only the black shiny core, which is duly 
shipped and subsequently sold and 
“ warranted ” at fifty cents a pound. 
In strong contrast to the foregoing 
products of warp and woof is the hum¬ 
bler art of the plastic builders — the 
adobe-dweUers among our birds. Of 
such are the robin—true child of the 
sod, with its domicile of mud and coarse 
grass—and the thrushes generally, the 
phoebe, pewee, and the swallows. Solid 
and substantial fair-weather structures, 
they are yet far inferior in the scale of 
architectural intelligence ; for while in 
the textile nests even a drenching rain 
serves but to amalgamate the mass, the 
mud-builders are often at the mercy of 
the storm ; a possible fate which is not 
always anticipated in the selection of a 
building site. In the case of the swal¬ 
low beneath the eaves, and the phoebe 
under the bridge, the home is safe, but 
the robin occasionally pays a heavy 
penalty for the daring exposure of its 
