The mother alone fashioned the nest, weaving it strongly of grasses and bark, of fibre, hair and string, and lashing it firmly near the end, a hanging cradle for the wind to rock at will and safely, and beautifully adorned with a fantastic pattern of green oak leaves, woven across, and aiding to conceal the nest itself. The eggs, four to six, were white, but marked with strange characters, sometimes distinct, sometimes obscure, a hieroglyphic of black or fuscous lines, over which the mother brooded patiently for many days. But the male oriole was not indifferent, even while the young were in the egg. He did not fear to expose himself upon an upper branch, where he could watch untiringly over the safety of the beloved nest and all day long, in bright or cloudy weather, floated down to his silent mate a song of courage and tenderness. Ah, no shepherds in far-off Arcady ever piped more sweetly to their beloved than this winged lover! His note is wild and free, a touch of anxious pleading perhaps in the brooding song that one does not catch in the first triumphant cry of joy with which he flashes upon our sight in April, but inexpressibly sweet and liquid. It is essentially music of the pipes, like the soft airs blown by lips of happy children upon reeds cut from the brook-side in the first joyous days of spring, but it is different in its airy quality, as if a melody, unfinished, were floating far above our heads! They are loving house-holders, and, if undisturbed, will return, year after year, to the same nest. Happy is the Dryad that dwells in an oak where the orioles build and sing! Ella F. Mosby. [Illustration: ] THE MARBLED GODWIT. (_Limosa fedoa._) —I behold The godwits running by the water edge, The mossy bridges mirrored as of old; The little curlews creeping from the sedge. —Jean Ingelow, “The Four Bridges.” The Godwits form an interesting group of the shore birds (Limicolae) and belong in the same family as the snipes and sandpipers. They command attention not alone because of their habits, but also because they have for centuries been considered a delicate food for man, and much has been written in praise of their flesh. Early in the sixteenth century one of the European species was rated as “worth three times as much as the snipe,” and was considered a delicacy of the French epicure. We are told that the black-tailed Godwit in the year 1766 was sold in England for half-a-crown. Ben Jonson speaks enthusiastically of this bird as a delicate morsel for the appetite. The origin of the name Godwit is veiled in obscurity. It has been suggested that it may be a corruption of the two words good and the antiquated word wight, the latter meaning swift, though the Godwits are not birds of very rapid flight.