in the midst of all the noise and bustle of the capitol, a circumstance which was considered remarkable enough to be commemorated in the medals of Adrian.

Southey says that in Spain the storks build their broad nests on the towers of churches, and are held sacred*. At Seville almost every tower in the city is peopled with them, and they return annually to the same nests. One of the causes of their being venerated is their destroying all the vermin on the tops of the houses †. At Bagdad, Niebuhr observed a nest of this sort on the roof of a decayed mosque, and tells us that hundreds of the birds are to be seen there on every house, wall, and tree, quite tame. We are also told by Fryer that they are so exceedingly numerous among the ruins of Persepolis, in Persia, that the summit of almost every pillar of those magnificent monuments of antiquity contains a stork's nest.

Letters from Spain, i. 126 and 228.
+ Dillon's Travels, p. 308.

195

CHAPTER X.

BASKET-MAKING BIRDS. THE JAY. AMERICAN BLUE

JAY.

BULFINCH.

MOCKING-BIRD.

SOLITARY THRUSH. RED-WINGED STARLING. MISSEL THRUSH. AMERICAN BASKET-MAKING BIRDS.

ALTHOUGH, in many of the instances recorded in this volume, birds far excel us in the neatness and delicacy of their workmanship, yet those which we have in the present chapter to compare to basketmakers, do not always manifest much dexterity, and, in some cases, make their nests very loosely, and in an ill-finished manner. The materials employed by the ingenuity of man in making baskets are very various; for though the greater number are made of osiers and other flexible twigs, some are constructed of strips of wood, some of leaves, and others of rushes or reeds. Even the least refined of savage nations are often dexterous in such manufactures, Vaillant saw some baskets among the Gonaqua Hottentots of Southern Africa worked with reeds in so delicate a manner, and of so close a texture, that they were used for carrying water, milk, and other liquids *.

Birds, however, make use of many more kinds of materials in forming their nest-baskets than is done, so far as we know, in our manufactures; while they seldom, if ever, employ osiers as we do. Our most conspicuous and best-known basket-making birds, indeed, so far from always selecting flexible materials, which we should deem indispensable, prefer *Travels, vol. i. p. 360.

brittle dead sticks at least for the outworks; which are, in fact, constructed, at the commencement of the nest, much on the model of the platform builders. The jay (Garrulus glandarius, BRISSON), for example, selects for its nest the fork of a bush or tree in a solitary part of a wood, precisely similar to the ring-dove (Columba Palumbus), and commences the structure so exactly like it, that it would not be easy to tell the difference between a finished nest of the one and a half-finished nest of the other. But it would appear that the jay,-a much shrewder bird

in many respects than the ring-dove,-probably finding its five or six eggs more difficult to manage than the ring-dove's two, makes an addition to the flat nest, which effectually prevents the eggs from rolling off. Upon the platform, as a foundation, the jay constructs a sort of rude basket-work of roots thickly matted together, the hollow being very shallow, just large enough to contain the eggs, and greatly smaller in proportion than the basement, as may be seen in the figure. A specimen of the jay's nest in the British Museum is quite flat, and composed of fewer materials than a ring-dove's. We consider it to be only the inner bottom of the basket, the base and sides having been trimmed off, as is frequently done, by nest collectors. If this is not so, we can only say that it is very unlike any of the jays' nests which we have examined in their original localities both in England and Scotland, all of these having a shallow cup-shaped basket of matted roots placed upon a platform of birch and other small twigs very irregularly piled together *.

It would appear, from Mr. Abbot's description, that the blue jay of America (Garrulus cristatus, BRISSON) builds a very similar nest; but, though smaller than ours, it builds much higher, selecting the fork of an oak or a pine about thirty feet from the ground, whereas ours is seldom more than from seven to twelve feet high, and concealed with so much art that it is seldom discovered t. Wilson says it builds a large nest frequently in the cedar, and sometimes in an apple-tree, and lines it with dry fibrous roots.

Our own jay is a fine bird, of a chesnut-brown coat, contrasting elegantly with his beautiful barred wings of blue and black, and the eyes of a pale blue. † Latham, Gen. Hist. of Birds, iii.

J. R,