Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/185

Rh autumnal color of its foliage.&quot; (Coll. R. I. Hist. Soc. vol. iii.)

Jan. 13, 1856. Took to pieces a pensile nest which I found  probably a vireo's, may be a red-eye's. In our workshops we pride ourselves on discovering a use for what had been previously regarded as waste, but how partial and accidental our economy compared with nature's. In nature nothing is wasted. Every decayed leaf and twig and fibre is only the better fitted to serve in some other department, and all at last are gathered in her compost heap. What a wonderful genius it is that leads the vireo to select the tough fibre of the inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, for its basket, the elastic pine needles and the twigs curved as they dried to give it form, and, as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., to bind it together with. I suspect that extensive use is made of these abandoned cocoons by the birds, and they, if anybody, know where to find them. There were at least seven materials used in constructing this nest, and the bird visited as many distinct localities many times, always with the purpose or design of finding some particular one of these materials, as much as if it had said to itself, &quot;Now I will go and get some old hornet's nest from one of those that I saw last fall, down in the maple swamp, perhaps thrust my