146 BIRD LIFE ON ISLAND AND SHORE 
reached by a long moist hollow way, and with 
stagnant water lying within a few inches of the 
eggs. Into it also dry feathers were carried, and 
from it wet feathers removed. In the two nests 
examined there was, however, no mass of feathers ; 
only a sufficiency of blankets were worn; only a 
sufficiency of feathers stored to meet weather 
conditions. The more dry ones brought in, the 
more wet ones to be removed, the birds may 
have argued. Maybe, too, hunted by their fero- 
cious foe the Robin, they had not yet learned 
to accept their fate unrepiningly ; maybe, too, 
they were aware of their unmerited handicap in 
health. 
We can credit them, perhaps in some blind 
confused fashion, deeming that it was no part 
and parcel of the original order of things that 
they should hatch their eggs in a musty atmo- 
sphere; that it was no part of the original order 
of things that their neat nest, created to turn 
rain in the open, and doubtless to joy the little 
architects’ esthetic sense, should perforce be built 
in black damp dark. Type of nest construction, 
nevertheless, after the ancestral model—its crait- 
manship passed down from happier days—was 
followed still. Though now a work of supereroga- 
tion, senseless, since it could neither be seen by 
the builders nor withstand on behalf of their eggs 
and young the vicissitudes of climate—the chill 
