the birds pass there the greater part
of the day, preening their feathers and narrating the news of the
forest. Bower-birds' clubs are drawing-rooms raised at the common
expense by all who frequent them. The Spotted Bower-bird, the
_Chlamydera maculata_, which also lives in the interior of Australia,
exercises this method of construction with equal success. The bowers
built by these birds may be one metre in length; this is on a very
luxurious scale, the animal itself only measuring twenty-five
centimetres. In this species, as among other Bower-birds, the bowers
are not the labour and the property of a single couple; they are the
result of the collaboration of several households, who come together
to shelter themselves there. These birds feed only on grains, so that
it is to a very pronounced taste for collecting that we must attribute
this mania of piling up before the entrance of the bower white stones,
shells, and small bones. (Fig. 25.) These objects are intended solely
for the delight of these feathered artists. They are very careful also
only to collect pieces which have been whitened and dried by the
sun.[93]

[93] Gould first accurately described the habits of the
Bower-birds, _Proceed. Zool. Soc._; _London_, 1840, p. 94;
also _Handbook to the Birds of Australia_ (1865), vol. i.
pp. 444-461. See also Darwin's _Descent of Man_ (1881), pp.
381 and 413-414.

Certain Humming-birds also, according to Gould, decorate their
dwellings with great taste. "They instinctively fasten thereon," he
stated, "beautiful pieces of flat lichen, the larger pieces in the
middle, and the smaller on the part attached to the branch. Now and
then a pretty feather is intertwined or fastened to the outer sides,
the stem being always so placed that the feather stands out beyond the
surface."[94]

[94] Gould, _Introduction to the Trochilidae_, 1861, p. 19.

_Dwellings woven of flexible substances._--In spite of their lack of
skill and the inadequacy of their organs for this kind of work, Fish
are not the most awkward architects. The species which construct nests
for laying in are fairly numerous; the classical case of the
Stickleback is always quoted, but this is not the only animal of its
class to possess the secret of the manufacture of a shelter for its
eggs.

A fish of Java, the Gourami (_Osphronemus olfax_), establishes an
ovoid nest with the leaves of aquatic plants woven together. It makes