2. A(;ricultuke of maixe. 



tearing out a portion of the inside and eating it. But you must 

 have birds enough, or they will not do that. 



Now we come to the birds of the woods. There is a log 

 cabin in which I have spent a great many months in different 

 years. We attracted the birds there. A chimney swift had 

 her nest in the chimney. We put a mirror in the fireplace and 

 could see what she was doing. On the ends of the logs the 

 robins nested. At the doorway a vireo had her nest and the 

 male staid on the nest and sung as they often do. Right over- 

 head w^as a rose-breasted grosbeak's nest and the male — here is 

 another bird which sings on the nest. We often saw and 

 heard him singing. The peculiar thing about that bird is that 

 when a hawk came overhead he would continue his singing just 

 the same, but his voice would lower and sound as if it came 

 from away off in the woods. He seemed to be a sort of ven- 

 triloquist. Right at the end of the cabin a great barberry bush 

 grew. \\'e fertilized it with ashes and other fertilizer, and 

 so it grew six or eight feet high and it was covered with bar- 

 berries. The grouse and the partridges came from the woods 

 and fed on the berries within six feet of our window. We 

 never could get a picture of them because they always came in 

 the morning when the light was too poor to take the picture of 

 a moving bird ; but they came about the place and w^e sometimes 

 saw the mother birds with their young. If you have some of 

 the plants which bear wild fruit that we do not eat, and pro- 

 tect these plants, or if you set them out, you can attract the birds 

 in that way. You may put out a little water in a pan in which 

 birds bathe and drink and in a dry time a little mud is appre- 

 ciated by the robin and you may see her taking it for her nest. 

 The swallows and the phebes will do the same. A fountain on 

 the lawn after the grass is cut so that the cats cannot sneak up, 

 is another nice thing in which to water the birds, and if you 

 give them water enough they are not so liable to take the fruit. 

 A few species of birds because of their great appetite are very 

 destructive to some kinds of fruit. 



A little about attracting birds in the summer. There are a 

 few things we can do, which I have not time to explain. In one 

 case meal worms w^ere used to attract robins, bluebirds and other 

 insect eating birds in the summer and they became \^ry tame. 



I will close with the story of a bird house that two children 

 put up at the beginning of the summer vacation. The children 



