1G8 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



And I have, when hearing their sweet music, taken fresh courage and felt 

 that life was not all toil and weariness, but that even the arduous work 

 of farm life had its compensation. Maurice Thompson well says while 

 listening to the brown thrush, cat-bird, or better still the thrilling notes 

 of the mocking-bird or the sweet oriole, we are hearing a lyre thousands 

 upon thousands of years old. The earth was a grand and beautiful ball 

 of water and forests and grassy plains with swarms of birds and insects, 

 and legions of wild beasts and myriads of reptiles, a long dreary, odor- 

 ous and tuneful age before man stood in the presence of his Maker and 

 was called good, It would be charming if one could but have the 

 record of the ages all arranged to read the bird songs backward as one 

 may read backward through the songs of man to their first babblings 

 in the oldest groves. When was the first blue-bird's song uttered? 

 Where did the cerulean wings first tremble among the young leaves of 

 spring ? 



It is currently reported that birds occupy their nests but once, but 

 I watched a robin build her nest four years ago, and she has returned 

 and used the same nest each year since. It being near my window, I 

 have ample opportunities of seeing her motions. 



She built it on a rainy Sunday. I might have been better employed, 

 but I watched her with considerable interest. She first built it very 

 compactly of twigs and leaves, then plastered it with wet mud which 

 she carried in her mouth from the ditch near by, then left it three days 

 to dry, after which she lined it with soft grass and leaves, laid her eggs, 

 and in ten days her labor was rewarded by four little robins. All this 

 time the good man robin sat on a tree near by and sang to her, Oh so 

 sweetly ! A red-bird also reared two broods the season in one nest. 

 Papa red-bird fed and cared for the first brood while the mother was 

 setting the second time. 



I was much amused one day watching a battle between the cat-bird ? 

 mocking-bird and thrush; just like human singers, each one thought he 

 could sing the sweetest and wanted the rest to keep still and listen. 

 It is an actual fact that the mocking-bird will almost always quit sing- 

 ing whenever the robin commences; he happens to be very hungry 

 about that time and goes to looking industriously for a worm. The 

 note of the robin is so loud and shrill he knows his musical trilling will 

 be unheard. Birds, while not really a horticultural subject, are so 

 closely connected with the work of the horticulturist as to make their 

 study of great importance to him. It is estimated that one turkey will 

 consume one gallon of insects in a season; then calculating from size, 

 each quail, dove, mocking-bird or thrush, and all other birds of equal 

 size, will certainly consume a pint ; then sixteen would eat a peck, and 



