Excerpt from Birds' Nests and Eggs: With Directions for Preparing, Stuffing, and Mounting Birds and Animals; With Thirteen Engravings and Diagrams, and a Coloured Illustration of the Eggs of British Pet Birds A little later, and the smaller birds make the grove sound musical, as their several songs of love are poured forth. From this time the male becomes the slave of the female. He sings to charm her; he labours incessantly to aid her; he gathers materials for the nest; he assists her in building, and super intends the workmanship; and marvellous it is to see them, without other instruments than beak and claws, build and weave or sew the nest, according to their peculiar habits. Observe the materials which they employ with so much effect, and with a discernment which indicates something approaching to intelligence. Look how skilfully one weaves the catkins of the willow, the poplar, and thistle down, surrounding it by stronger fibres, and the address with which it is suspended at the extremity of some slender pendulous branch, beyond the reach of anything that only runs or creeps. Another, having made its calcula tions, fixes its nest so near to the surface of the water, that as the wind sweeps through the four reeds to which it is so firmly and yet so delicately attached, its bottom just touches the water without being immersed, even in the most violent storm. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.