hayrick was composed outwardly of hay; while another, in a raspberry bush, was wholly composed of the leaves of that plant. Probably the only hang-nests of British birds are those of the gold-crest, reed-warbler, and long-tailed titmouse. The first is usually hung among the long, trailing tassels of the pine, where it is most difficult to detect. It is quite one of the prettiest examples of bird architecture, and is thickly felted with wool, feathers, and spiders' webs. The eggs are white, speckled with red. Montague kept a brood of eight nestlings in his room, when he found that the female bird fed them upon an average thirty-six times an hour, and that this was continued sixteen hours a day. Besides being built in pines, the nests are sometimes attached to yews and cedars. The cradle of the reed-warbler is invariably hung upon the stalks of reeds, rushes, and other aquatic plants; and the whole structure is often swayed about so much by the wind as not unfrequently to touch the water. The bottle-shaped nest of the long-tailed tit is almost as remarkable as its builder. It is exquisite alike in form and material, and its interior is a perfect mass of feathers. In one nest alone were found two thousand three hundred and seventy-nine, chiefly those of the pheasant, wood-pigeon, rook, and partridge. Sometimes a great many eggs are found in the nest of the long-tailed titmouse--as many as twenty, it is stated--and these are white, speckled, and streaked with red. The colours of eggs in relation to birds and the site of their nests is an exceedingly interesting phase of the philosophy of the subject. It is found as an almost invariable rule that birds which lay white eggs nest in holes as a means of protection. The high-flying, loud-screeching swift is an instance of this. So is the burrowing sand-martin, the kingfisher, the shell-duck, and the woodpecker; also the puffin and the stock-dove, which breed in disused rabbit burrows. All these lay white eggs. The hole which the swift selects is usually in a high building; while the delicate bank-swallows drill their holes in river banks or sandholes. The eggs of the kingfisher are perhaps the most beautiful of all. They are beautifully round, delicately white, glossy, and suffused with an exquisite rosy flush. For breeding, the kingfisher either drills a hole for itself or occupies that deserted by some small rodent. The seven or eight eggs are placed at the end of the burrow, upon a mass of dry fish bones ejected by the bird. The nest is so friable that it is almost impossible to remove it, and at one time it was said that the authorities at the British Museum were prepared to pay one hundred pounds for an absolutely perfect nest of the kingfisher.