4 
THE MUSEUM. 
as to evince a desire to build. When alone, he always allowed them the freedom of his 
studio, in or out of season. One lovely June morning in 1883, the outside world being 
full of joy and life and sunshine, he threw open the door of their cage, and settled him¬ 
self for reading. Hardly had he read a dozen lines when he felt something pulling at 
his hair; on looking up he descried the offender flying towards a distant part of the 
room with something in her bill that resembled a hair. When the Doctor had resumed 
his reading, she stole cautiously forward, seized another hair, and was off in a twinkling. 
Permitting these liberties for a while, and noticing that bits of strings were, when placed 
in positions to be seen, as much the objects of interest as the hairs of his head, he was 
not slow in divining the motive which led to this strange and unexpected proceeding. 
Convinced by actions as significant as words themselves could be, he at once entered 
into the idea of his little feathered friend, and 
began to look about for a room where she might 
carry out her plan for the future, free from human 
interference. In a short time a place was found 
in the attic, which he fitted up, furnishing it with 
a large branch for a perch, and with the necessary 
materials, in the shape of new white strings, for 
nest building. The female now entered into her 
voluntarily imposed task with the most deter¬ 
mined zeal and alacrity, and at the end of a week 
had constructed a domicile which her wild, un¬ 
tamed prototypes of the fields and the roadsides 
would strive in vain to excel. 
In Eastern Pennsylvania rare, curious nests of 
the Acadian flycatcher are often found. Such a 
one was discovered by the writer in June, 1882. 
It was placed upon the forked branch of a small 
red oak. The dried blossoms of the hickory, 
which are the sole materials of the ordinary struc¬ 
ture in this latitude, were here altogether wanting. 
In lieu thereof, long fibres of the inner bark of 
some herbaceous plant were substituted. These were compactly modeled into a shal¬ 
low, saucer-like cavity, from which depended a gradually tapering train of the same 
substance, for nearly twelve inches 
A pair of kingbirds once took a fancy to an old apple-tree that stood a few yards 
from the writer’s Germantown home. It was certainly not a place of quiet and retire¬ 
ment. Scores of noisy children daily resorted to its shelter for coolness and pastime, 
but the birds were not uneasy. They had fixed their minds upon the spot, and build 
they did. The nest was placed upon a forked branch just out of the reach of the ur¬ 
chins. It was a curious affair. Roots of various kinds constituted the bulk of the 
fabric; but, as its completion was near at hand, the opportune discovery of a bunch of 
NEST OF ACADIAN FLY-CATCHER. 
