Page:Natural history of the farm.djvu/166

it can find for cordage. Many birds weave shorter fibers into the walls of their nests. Most birds find suitable upholstering fibers for cushioning the eggs — horsehair or feathers or thistledown. And the robin mixes grass blades and bast fibers with the clay out of which he builds his mud nest. The birds know how to find proper raw material in great variety. Let us in the following study examine some of these undeveloped fiber resources.

This is a study for the day when the weather is most unfavorable for field work; when the cold is too bitter or the blast too fierce for prolonged work outdoors. Then, certain fiber products may be gathered quickly and taken inside for examination; but a satisfactory range of materials for this work may be had only by gathering some of them in advance.

1. Nests of birds, especially of Baltimore orioles. These nests are easy to find in winter, being suspended conspicuously from elm boughs high above the roads, but they are not easy to reach. The twigs bearing them may be clipped off with a long-handled pruner.

2 . Nests of mice, especially of deer mice. These are built in the branches of bushes in the woods.

3. Cotton-bearing seeds of milkweed, etc., should be gathered in autumn at the ripening of their pods.

4. Herbaceous stems may be gathered for their bast fiber at any time after maturing, and some, such as dogbane and milkweed, should be gathered as a part of this exercise; but in order to obtain the bast readily, the stems should have been gathered earlier and "retted" for a week or more (as necessary, according to species) in water.

5. Coarser fibrous materials in variety. The bast strips of linden are obtained by stripping the bark from young trees in midsummer, when full of sap, and drying it thor-