TRANSACTIONS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NORTHERN ILL. 271 



builds his nest of sticks, and rears his young beyond the reach of ordinary 

 guns. The country which does not afford these or their equivalents is 

 no home for him. With such places for security and shelter, he will 

 brave the cold of the bleakest mountain regions, and enliven the entire 

 winter day with his music, more vociferous than sweet. 



Nor is he such a bad fellow, after all, as he is generally considered. 

 It is true he steals a modicum of grain from the farmer, but he destroys 

 mice and reptiles enough to do far greater damage, if left undestroyed 

 by him, than he can do. He is, besides this, a scavenger of no mean 

 pretensions, removing enough offal and filth in a season to poison the 

 air around your dwelling, if unremoved. He is an omnivorous feeder, 

 yet prefers flesh, in any stage, to the best of golden grain. He is, 

 however, practically out of the ring, so far as our list is concerned, being 

 at best but a visitor, coming and going, until sufficient and safe shelter is 

 provided him. 



We have no time to notice our winter birds of prey, nor yet to 

 more than allude to those most graceful and beautiful, as well as useful, 

 seed and insect eating birds which roam our fields and meadows, from 

 the quail to the pheasant inclusive. The great usefulness of these birds 

 requires their better protection by law, as well as their greater encourage- 

 ment by farmers. In some places, where the quails have been nearly 

 exterminated, live birds have been procured from the trappers, and kept 

 confined and fed during winter, to supply the place of those so cruelly 

 slaughtered. Beyond their value as game, and aside from the pleasure 

 derived from the sport of legitimate hunting, they have been trapped and 

 snared without any apparent motive, until our prairies are nearly free 

 from their cheerful presence. The severity of some of our recent winters, 

 together with the absence of the tall grass which formerly served as a 

 covert in winter, partly accounts for their present scarcity; but we sug- 

 gest that it would pay every farmer to preserve game on his own estate, 

 not only by preventing its wanton destruction, but also by making artifi- 

 cial coverts, where they could be protected from the storms, and in 

 supplying food for their use during long continued storms, like those of 

 the present winter. 



BIRD SOXGS AND BIRD LABORS. 



KV MRS. I'. V. HATHEWAY. 



Mrs. Hatheway read, in her usual pleasing style, the following 

 interesting essay : 



As fragrance is the crowning characteristic of the flower, so song is 

 the crowning characteristic of the bird. We do not feel thoroughly sat- 

 isfied with a flower if it has no odor, and we do not feel satisfied, or at 

 least do not feel acquainted, with a bird which has no song. The song 

 season of the birds is their day of perfection, as much as the blossoming 

 day of the rose bush is the time for which the rest of its life seems made. 



We have a thrush, the Alice thrush, quite plentiful in some parts of 

 the Mississippi valley, I believe, though I liave seen it but once or twice, 



