with a small cavity for the eggs inside, and outwardly resembling a
gigantic powder-flask, lying horizontally among the lower branches of a
spreading tree. Pracellodomtis sibila-trix, a bird in size like the
English house sparrow, also makes a huge nest, and places it on the
twigs at the terminal end of a horizontal branch from twelve to fifteen
feet above the ground; but when finished, the weight of the structure
bears down the branch-end to within one or two feet of the surface. Mr.
Barrows, who describes this nest, says: "When other branches of the same
tree are similarly loaded, and other trees close at hand bear the same
kind of fruit, the result is very picturesque." Synallaxis phryganophila
makes a stick nest about a foot in depth, and from the top a tubular
passage, formed of slender twigs interlaced, runs down the entire length
of the nest, like a rain-pipe on the wall of a house, and then becoming
external slopes upward, ending at a distance of two to three feet from
the nest. Throughout South America there are several varieties of these
fruit-and-stem or watering-pot shaped nests; they are not, however, all
built by birds of one genus, while in the genus Synallaxis many species
have no tubular passageways attached to their nests. One species--erythro
thorax--in Yucatan, makes so large a nest of sticks, that the
natives do not believe that so small a bird can be the builder. They say
that when the _tzapatan_ begins to sing, all the birds in the forest
repair to it, each one carrying a stick to add to the structure; only
one, a tyrant-bird, brings two sticks, one for itself and one for the
_urubu_ or vulture, that bird being considered too large, heavy, and
ignorant of architecture to assist personally in the work.

In the southern part of South America, where scattered thorn trees grow
on a dry soil, these big nests are most abundant. "There are plains,"
Mr. Barrows writes, "within two miles of the centre of this town
(Concepcion, Argentine Republic), where I have stood and counted, from