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Mr. Beard adds that: "Very near to the fireengine house in Covington was the county courthouse, and on its cupola stood a wooden figure of

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ute or two, and presently a sparrow flew right in the hole-which really did n't seem to be more than an inch across; but the bird went all the way in, out of sight, and we could hear the young birds chirping inside. I suppose the masons must have left a small cavity there when the house was built, and that the piazza post covered it all but this little corner. A pair of sparrows have built in the same place this year, too. I don't know, of course, whether or not they are the same ones, but I should think it highly probable."

HOW A BIRD OUTWITTED THE MONKEYS.

Mr. Ernest Ingersoll contributes the following account of a very curious and ingenious nest built by a little Asiatic bird:

'Of all the hanging nests, commend me to that made of grass by the baya sparrow of India. It is one of the most perfect bird-houses I know of, and seems only to need a fire-place to make it a real house. Its shape and mode of attachment at the top to the end of the limb are shown in the picture. It is entered through the long neck at the lower end. The bed for the eggs rests in the bulb or expansion at the middle of the nest, where there are actually two rooms, for the male has a perch divided off from the female by a little partition, where he may sit and sing to her in rainy weather, or when the sun shines very hot, and where he may rest at night. The walls are a firm lattice-work of grass, neatly woven together, which permits the air to pass through, but does not allow the birds to be seen. The whole nest is from fourteen to eighteen inches long, and six inches wide at the thickest part. It is hung low over the water,-why, we shall presently see, and its only entrance is through the hanging neck.

"Why do birds build hanging nests? "Those birds that do make hanging nests, undoubtedly do it because they think them the safest. Birds' eggs are delicacies on the bill of fare of several animals, and are eagerly sought by them. Snakes, for instance, live almost entirely upon them, during the month of June; squirrels eat them, raccoons also, and opossums, cats, rats, and mice. But none of these animals could creep out to the pliant, wavy ends of the willow branches or elm twigs, and cling there long enough to get at the contents of a Baltimore oriole's nest.

"In the country where the baya sparrow lives, there are snakes and opossums, and all the rest of the egg-eaters; and in addition there are troops

of monkeys, which are more to be feared than all the rest together. Monkeys are wonderfully expert climbers, from whom the eggs in an ordinary open-top pouch nest, like the oriole's, would not be secure; for if they can get anywhere near, they will reach their long, slender fingers down inside the nest. The baya sparrow discovered this, and learned to build a nest inclosed on all sides, and to enter it from underneath by a neck too long for a monkey to conveniently reach up through. Beside this, she took the precaution to hang it out on the very tips of light branches, upon which she thought no robber would dare trust himself. But she found that the monkeys 'knew a trick worth two o' that.' They would go to a higher limb which was strong, and one would let himself down from it, grasping it firmly with his hands; then another monkey would crawl down and hold on to the heels of the first one, another would go below him, and so on until several were hanging to each other, and the lowest one could reach the sparrow's treasures. He would eat them all himself, and then one by one they would climb up over each other; and last of all the tired first one, who had been holding up the weight of all the rest, would get up, too, and all would go noisily off in search of fresh plunder, which, I suppose, would be given to a different one, the rest making a ladder for him as before.

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"Now the cun

ning baya sparrow saw a way to avoid even this dangerous trickery. She knew that there was nothing a monkey hated so terribly as to

get his sleek coat wet. He would rather go hungry. So she hung her nest over the water close to the surface, and the agile thieves do not dare make a chain long enough to enable the last one to reach up into her nest from below, as he must do, for fear that the springy branches might bend so far as to souse them into the water.

"The sparrow has fairly outwitted the monkey!"

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