In a flowering hawthorn outside our window we watched a loving pair building their pensile nest among the thorns and blossoms. How incessant was their solicitude for that fragile framework until its strength was fully assured against the tossing breeze! Tenderly and eagerly they helped each other in the disposition of those ravellings of string and strips of bark! he stopping every now and then to whisper sweetly to his mate, as she, with drooping, trembling wings, put up her little open bill to kiss. Yes, we often saw this little tender episode, as we watched them through the shutters of the half-closed blinds! Now he flies away; and the little spouse, thus left alone, jumps into the nest, and we see its mossy meshes swell as she fits the deep hollow to her feathery breast. Presently her consort returns, trailing along a gossamer of cobweb, which he throws around the supporting thorn, and leaves for her to spread and tuck among the crevices. Again he appears, with his tiny bill concealed in a silvery puff of cotton from the willow catkins in the swamp; next he brings a wisp of long gray moss; now a curly flake of rich brown lichen, or a jagged square of birch bark, all of which are laid against the nest, and half covered with films of cobweb. Once more we see his tiny form among the hawthorn blossoms as he tugs a papery piece of hornets’ nest through the pink barricade. This is arranged to hang beneath as a pendant to their floating fabric, and the happy little couple sit together upon a neighboring twig in twittering admiration. And well they may, for a prettier nest than theirs never hung upon a thorn. Not perfect yet, it seems, however, for that little feminine eye has seen the need of one more touch. Away she flies, and in a minute more a downy feather, tipped with iridescent green, is adjusted in the cobwebs. [Illustration: IN THE APPLE ORCHARD.] This dainty little work of art is only one of the thousands that everywhere are building in the blooming trees and thickets. These are the supreme moments of the spring, consecrated to the loves of bird and blossom. Every little winged form that scarcely bends the twig has its all-consuming passion, and every tree its wedding of the flower. Out in the orchard the apple-trees are laden in veritable domes of pink-white bloom, as if by the rare spectacle of a rosy fall of snow, and from among the dewy petals the army of bees give forth their low, continuous drone--that sympathetic chord in the universal harmony of spring. How they revel in that rich harvest! Who knows what sweet messages are borne from flower to flower upon those filmy wings?