AT ATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETV. I33 



send ill :i rciX}!!.*" Now, 1 will U-ll you why 1 tried so hard lo escape 

 this duty. It is because I begin to believe that there is some truth in 

 what our Alton friends have alleged, /. e., "that Douglas has such a 

 weakness tor birds that he <annol see their faults." I consider myself a 

 prejudiced witness, hcn( c my unw illingncss to testily. 



I will admit this much however, that last summer many robins and 

 cat-birds, — to save traveling expenses, — brought their young ones, bred 

 in other localities, just as soon as they could fl)', to my ravine, close by 

 my fruit-garden and orchard, and then went to work (with an energy 

 worthy of a better cause) stealing my fruit, and stulfing these young 

 ones, "not to the manor born." 



Now, why should these young robins and cat-birds be fed at my ex- 

 pense? How do 1 know whether it was their parents or some other 

 robins and cat-birds that I saw gobbling up the cut-worms and grubs, 

 when we were plowing and planting last spring, and early stnnmer.' I 

 wish 1 could single out these interlopers, and wouldn't I blaze away at 

 them? But these robins and cat-birds are honest compared with a 

 thrush — not the brown tlirasher — but a solitary olive-green-backed fel- 

 low, who will not stay long enougli to be identified. Now this fellow 

 comes stealing along all alone, and I have no doubt "with evil intent," 

 for you cannot go near him till he flies, and darts out of sight. Not so 

 with the robins and cat-birds; they come with their families and friends, 

 as if they thought they had a right to their living, and then they chirp 

 and chatter as if they came to erijoy each other's society as much as to 

 enjoy the good living. Why I there is as much difierence between them 

 and this thrush, as there is between some of these well-meaning but 

 misguided fellows, who take a glass for the sociability of the thing, and 

 a still, quiet, old soaker who takes his sly swig bjhind the door, and 

 then wipes his mouth, and comes out as meek(?) as a good Knight 

 Templar. 



flow the cedar-birds did devour my cherries last summer ! Now, 

 I'll own up. 1 did stand and watch while the boy went for the gun, and 

 what a shot it would have been, for I think there were twenty or thirty 

 in the flock, but before the boy came back, three or four of them darted 

 off at'ter stray moths, and gobbled them up, before my eyes. Why I who 

 would have thought that one of these clumsy birds, with a little less than 

 a pint of cherries in his maw, could dart so quick, and snap, and catch 

 every time? I got to watching them so intently that i "held my hre", 

 and — would you believe it? — these gourmands all set to work devouring 

 the slugs from off the adjoining pear-tree leaves, till 1 went away, and 

 then they went back to the cherry-trees, and gobbled away as hard as 

 ever. 



I noticed an uncommon occurrence in the way of cedar-birds last 

 winter. For many years previous, they have gone south in the tall, and 

 then after winter fairly set in, the \\ a\-wings (lloheiuian Chatterers) 

 would come from the north and take their places, living on juniper, red- 



*The Sicretary "owns the corn," and the Society owiis^the report. 



