of gauze, make a fairy pillow for winter times, pretty to look at. They come with 

 thistle-down and milkweed tassels, and sumach droppings and maple leaves, and 

 the first oozing of spruce gum in the woods. Yes, and beechnuts and belated 

 goldenrod, and the first frosts that nip the cheek of the cranberry in the bog. 



And the huckleberry patch is littered with the tiny plumes, for tanagers love 

 the huckleberries that leave no stain on their greenish yellow lips. These huckle- 

 berries are their chief food in late berry-time, coming, as they do. when the juve- 

 niles need a change in their meat diet before the long flight ahead of lliem. L'p to 

 this date they made good, square meals from fat beetles and other insects big 

 enough to "pay for catching." That bumblebees and wasps are endowed with 

 sharp points in their character does not forbid the use of them for tanager food : 

 though it is presumed that the stings are either squeezed out, or the insect killed, 

 before it is fed to the nestlings, as we have noticed in the case of the phcebes. 



Tn these late summer days the singer punctuates his song often and long, for 

 he must recuperate for his autumn journey. More than this, he must protect his 

 young ones. He therefore loses the shyness of spring, and follows the juveniles 

 about, feeding them and teaching them to shift for themselves, and protecting 

 them with word and sig^i. His whole care is for his family, and hard is a cruel 

 world indeed whose human inhabitants can molest him. His scarlet cloth is for- 

 gotten. He will follow his young even into captivity, and there feed them through 

 bar or window. But not a fascinating prisoner is the tanager ; one grows accus- 

 tomed to his liright coat, and as it is seen against the pane in winter-time, con- 

 trasting with the whiteness of the snow, seems to reproach the hand that im- 

 prisoned it. When one stops to think of it, scarcely a bird in captivity, unless it 

 be the canary to the manner born, gives the satisfaction and amusement anticipated. 

 It is the going and coming of the wild birds that make more than half the fun. The 

 sudden surprise of spring: the reluctant departure of autunni. with the hoi)e of 

 intermediate days — there is charm in all this keeping of Nature's order. 



Well, good by, sweet scarlet tanager. Sing us back your farewell note of 

 "Wait, wait." We shall see you again when the early cherries are ripe, if not 

 sooner. The beetles and bumbles and the grasshoppers will be watching out for 

 vou, and the terrible hornet shall double his armor-plate to suit the strength of 

 your strong beak. It will be of no avail for the big black beetle to hide beneath 

 the iron kettle he carries on his back, and the bum of the big, yellow bum1)lebee 

 will serve onlv as its call-note, while the broad sword of the hornet will ha\e no 

 time to unsheath itself at sight of you. Good-bye, tanager. 



574 



