286 A MONTH'S MUSIC. 



able to take care of herself, would have thought 

 him deficient in earnestness. At any rate, the 

 wood wagtail is not the only bird whose court- 

 ship has the appearance of a scrimmage ; and I 

 believe there are still tribes of men among whom 

 similar practices prevail, although the greater 

 part of our race have learned, by this time, to 

 take somewhat less literally the old proverb, 

 " None but the brave deserve the fair." Love, 

 it is true, is still recognized as one of the pas- 

 sions (in theory at least) even among the most 

 highly civilized peoples ; but the tendency is 

 more and more to count it a tender passion. 



While I am on the subject of marriage I may 

 as well mention the white-eyed vireo. It had 

 come to be the 16th of the month, and as yet 

 I had neither seen nor heard anything of this 

 obstreperous genius ; so I made a special pil- 

 grimage to a certain favorite haunt of his — 

 Woodcock Swamp — to ascertain if he had ar- 

 rived. After fifteen minutes or more of wait- 

 ing I was beginning to believe him still absent, 

 when he burst out suddenly with his loud and 

 unmistakable Chip-a-weS-o. " Who are you^ 

 now ? " the saucy fellow seemed to say, " Who 

 are you^ now ? " Pretty soon a pair of the 

 birds appeared near me, the male protesting his 

 affection at a frantic rate, and the female re- 

 pelling his advances with a snappish determina- 



