To ascertain, for example, how far nest-building is instinctive in birds, Mr. John S. Budgett hatched a hen greenfinch under a canary. In the following autumn he bought a caged bird, a cock, probably of the same year, and in the succeeding spring turned the pair into a large aviary, supplying such material as twigs, rootlets, dried grass, moss, feathers, sheep’s wool and horsehair. The hen soon began to build, the cock bird taking no share in the work, and finished her nest in a few days. On careful comparison it was found to resemble that of a wild greenfinch in every particular, being made of wool, roots, and moss, lined with horsehair. A second nest the aviary greenfinch built was also quite normal. In the case of a bullfinch which Mr. Budgett reared, having obtained it when a few weeks’ old, the first nest was composed of dried grass with a little wool and hair, but without either rootlets or twigs. A second which she built was, however, quite typical, made of fine twigs and roots, and lined with horsehair; as was also a third nest. It is just possible, though most improbable, that the bullfinch utilized its three weeks’ experience gained in the nest from which it was taken. But Mr. Jenner Weir describes[58] observations on canaries in which this source of experience is excluded. “It is usual,” he says, “with canary fanciers to take out the nest constructed by the parent birds, and to place a felt nest in its place, and when her young are hatched, and old enough to be handled, to place a second clean nest, also of felt, in the box, removing the other. But I never knew that canaries so reared failed to make a nest when the breeding time arrived. I have, on the other hand, marvelled to see how like a wild bird’s the nests are constructed. It is customary to supply them with a small set of materials, such as moss and hair. They use the moss for the foundation, and line with the finer materials, just as a wild goldfinch would do.”