"THE unraveling of deserted nests," says Harper's Young People, "will often prove instructive as well as humorously entertaining pastime, revealing in the same fabric evidences of great sagacity, and what would appear perfectly nonsensical prejudices, with an occasional piece of positive frivolity. "Thus we can readily see the wisdom in the selection of these strong strips of milkweed bark with which the vireo's or yellow warbler's nest is moored to the forked branch, or the strands of twine with which the Baltimore oriole suspends its deep-swinging hammock, as well as the plentiful meshing of horsehair woven through the body of the nest. "The nest of the orchard oriole is even more remarkable as a piece of woven texture. Wilson, the ornithologist, by careful unraveling of a grass strand from one of these nests, found it to have been passed through the fabric and returned thirty-four times, the strand itself being only thirteen inches long, a fact which prompted an old lady friend of his to ask 'whether it would be possible to teach the birds to darn stockings.' "The horsehair in the nest of the hang bird gives it a wonderful compact strength, capable of sustaining a hundred times the weight of the bird. Upon unraveling one I found it intermeshed fourteen times in the length of ten inches, which would probably have given a total number of forty passes in the full length of the hair."—New York World.