60 ROMANCE OF A POOR OLD CATBIRD 



tickles bis fancy; always ripe for mischief, he startles the loviug- 

 I)air with his quick, shrill cry, like a burlesque of the kiss just 

 heard, and enjoys their little consternation. " It is only a Cat- 

 bird", they say reassuringly — but there are times when the 

 slightest jar is a shock, and pledges that hang in a trembling 

 balance may never be redeemed. 



" Only a Catbird "meanwhile remembers business of his own^ 

 and is off. The practical question of dining recurs. He means 

 to dine sumptuously, and so, like the French philosopher, place 

 himself beyond the reach of fate. But nature, in the month 

 of May, is full of combustible material, and the very atmosphere 

 is quick to carry the torch that was kindled in the arbor where 

 the lovers sat. His fate meets him in the only shape that 

 could so far restrain masculine instincts as to postpone a dinner. 

 The rest is soon told — rather it would be, could the secrets of 

 the impenetrable dark-green mass of Smilax whither the pair 

 betake themselves be revealed. The next we see of the bird, 

 he is perched on the topmost spray of yonder pear tree, with 

 quivering wings, brimful of song. He is inspired; for a time 

 at least he is lifted above the common-place ; his kinship with 

 the prince of song, with the Mockingbird himself, is vindicated. 

 He has discovered the source of the poetry of every-day life. 



Genus HARPORHYNCHUS Cabanis 



Chars. — Bill of indeterminate size and shape, ranging from 

 one extreme, in which it is straight and shorter than the heady 

 to the other, in which it exceeds the head in length and is bent 

 like a bow (see figs, of the several species, beyond). Feet large 

 and strong, indicating terrestrial habits; the tarsus strongly 

 scutellate anteriorly, about equaling or slightly exceeding in 

 length the middle toe with its claw. Wings and tail rounded, 

 the latter decidedly longer than the former. Rictus with well- 

 developed bristles. 



Viewing only the extremes of shape of the bill, as witnessed 

 in H. rtifus and such species as H. redivivus or R. crissalis, it 

 would not seem consistent with the minute subdivisions which 

 now obtain in ornithology to place all the species in one genus; 

 and two eminent European ornithologists have already pro- 

 posed to separate them. But the gradation of form is so gentle 

 that it seems impossible to dismember the group without vio- 



