The Australian Bower-bird, as its name implies, builds its nest like an arbour or bower, with twigs: in the British Museum are two specimens, each decorated--one with bones and fresh-water shells, and the other with feathers and land-shells; remarkable instances of taste for ornament already referred to in a preceding page. The Satin or Bower-bird is described by settlers in Australia as "a very troublesome rascal," which besets gardens; if once allowed to make a lodgment there it is very troublesome to get rid of him; he signalizes his arrival by pulling up, in his restless fussy way, everything in the garden that he can tug out of the ground, even to the little sticks to mark the site of seeds. A settler had formed a garden in the bush; there was no enclosure of the kind for miles in any direction: a flock of Bower-birds came; he got his gun and shot two or three; the flock went off, and he never saw another bird of the kind. The Cape Swallows build nests which show extraordinary instinct allied to reason. A pair of these built their nest on the outside of a house at Cape Town against the angle formed by the wall and the board which supported the eaves. The whole of this nest was covered in, and it was furnished with a long neck or passage, through which the birds passed in and out. It resembled a longitudinal section of a Florence oil flask. This nest having crumbled away after the young birds had quitted it, the same pair, or another of the same species, built on the old foundation again. But this time an improvement was observable in the plan of it that can hardly be referred to the dictates of mere instinct. The body of the nest was of the same shape as before, but instead of a single passage it was furnished with one at each side, running along the angle of the roof; and on watching the birds, they were seen invariably to go in at one passage and come out at the other. Besides saving themselves the trouble of turning in the nest and disturbing, perhaps, its interior arrangement, they were guarded by this contrivance against a surprise by serpents, which frequently creep up along the wall, or descend from the thatch, and devour both the mother and her brood.