nest of the common pewee, a modest mossy structure, with four
pearl-white eggs, looking out upon some wild scene and overhung by
beetling crags. After all has been said about the elaborate, high-hung
structures, few nests, perhaps, awaken more pleasant emotions in the
mind of the beholder than this of the pewee,--the gray, silent rocks,
with caverns and dens where the fox and the wolf lurk, and just out of
their reach, in a little niche, as if it grew there, the mossy
tenement!

Nearly every high projecting rock in my range has one of these nests.
Following a trout stream up a wild mountain gorge, not long since, I
counted five in the distance of a mile, all within easy reach, but
safe from the minks and the skunks, and well housed from the storms.
In my native town I know a pine and oak clad hill, round-topped, with
a bold, precipitous front extending half-way around it. Near the top,
and along this front or side, there crops out a ledge of rocks
unusually high and cavernous. One immense layer projects many feet,
allowing a person or many persons, standing upright, to move freely
beneath it. There is a delicious spring of water there, and plenty of
wild, cool air. The floor is of loose stone, now trod by sheep and
foxes, once by the Indian and the wolf. How I have delighted from
boyhood to spend a summer-day in this retreat or take refuge there
from a sudden shower! Always the freshness and coolness, and always
the delicate mossy nest of the phœbe-bird! The bird keeps her place
till you are within a few feet of her, when she flits to a near
branch, and, with many oscillations of her tail, observes you
anxiously. Since the country has become settled, this pewee has fallen
into the strange practice of occasionally placing its nest under a
bridge, hay-shed, or other artificial structure, where it is subject
to all kinds of interruptions and annoyances. When placed thus, the