The shed or crust of the nest is
a sort of rustic work full of knobs and protuberances on the
outside: nor is the inside of those that I have examined smoothed
with any exactness at all; but is rendered soft and warm, and fit for
incubation, by a lining of small straws, grasses, and feathers, and
sometimes by a bed of moss interwoven with wool. In this nest
they tread, or engender, frequently during the time of building; and
the hen lays from three to five white eggs.
At first when the young are hatched, and are in a naked and
helpless condition, the parent birds, with tender assiduity, carry out
what comes away from their young. Was it not for this affectionate
cleanliness the nestlings would soon be burnt up, and destroyed in
so deep and hollow a nest, by their own caustic excrement. In the
quadruped creation the same neat precaution is made use of;
particularly among dogs and cats, where the dams lick away what
proceeds from their young. But in birds there seems to be a
particular provision, that the dung of nestlings is enveloped into a
tough kind of jelly, and therefore is the easier conveyed off without
soiling or daubing.
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