Excerpt from A Natural History of the Nests and Eggs of British Birds, Vol. 2 of 3 In the neighbourhood of Belfast, where there are 'branches' of the cotton manufacture, these birds use that material in the construction of their nests; and in answer to the Objection that its conspicuous colour would betray the presence of the nest, and not accord with the theory that birds assimilate the outward ap pearance of their structures to surrounding Objects, it was replied, says Mr. Thompson, that, on the contrary, the use Of cotton in that locality might rather be con sidered as rendering the nest more difficult of detection, as the roadside hedges and neighbouring trees are always dotted with tufts of it. 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.