tinuously for fourteen days with the exception of a few short trips for daily 

 bread. On the fourteenth day the young jays ought to have been poking their 

 heads through the shells. They didn't poke. Mrs. Bluejay kept on sitting. 

 Eighteen days had passed and then the husband began to plead with his mate in 

 the few soft notes which he could command. He asked her to leave the nest, 

 but she paid no heed. Three weeks were up. Young jays that occupied a nest 

 whose foundation had been laid many days later than that of the fir tree home, 

 were feathering out and clamoring for food. This fact was duly called to the 

 attention of Mrs. Jay by her husband. She wouldn't budge an inch. He made 

 many trips to and from a laden cherry tree, carrying his spouse specimens of the 

 finest fruit and telling her there were thousands more like them on the tree. 

 There was found one female who was proof against the fruit temptation. Five 

 days more passed, and the devoted sitting bird looked tired and seedy. Her hus- 

 band, who throughout the ordeal had confined himself solely to mellifluous plead- 

 ings, now got mad. He flew to a perch a foot above his sitting mate, cocked his 

 head on one side, looked down at her, and with marked emphasis and significance 

 uttered the one word, "J^y-" Sarcasm won and madame left her nest and six 

 eggs for good and aye. After the desertion of the nest I took it down and broke 

 the eggs. They were dried up and showed no signs that incubation had advanced 

 beyond a day or two. 



One or two of my experiences makes me bold to say that I believe the birds 

 are much hardier creatures than generally is supposed. It is something of a 

 journey from our middle western fields to the rocky little spot known as David's 

 Island, in Long Island Sound. Let us make the journey if only for the sake of 

 a story of the hardihood of a song sparrow. I spent the winter of the year 1888 

 at David's Island which was then a United States military station. The first week 

 in March a song sparrow arrived on the island and made his headquarters near a 

 woodpile at the government dock. The bird sang daily from the top of an upright 

 pole which marked one of the divisions of the woodpile into cords. At the end 

 of the second week there came that awful blizzard which buried buildings in snow. 

 rooted trees out of the earth, and cost many human lives. The storm was the 

 worst in the history of the land and it raged unremittingly ior two days. Then 

 there came a lull ; the sun shone on a buried country ; the wooden barracks of the 

 army recruits in places were hidden from sight. So terrific had been the storm 

 that strong men sentinels had been overcome at their posts. On the morning of 

 the clearing of the skies the soldiers of the garrison attacked the snow-drifts and 

 broke a road to the woodpile where three days before the sparrow sang. When 

 the last great white mass was overcome the attacking party was greeted by as 

 cheerful a note as ever fell on soldiers' ears. The minstrel was the song sparrow 

 with his melody still unfrozen in his tlir<int and with a s[)irit that the storm could 

 not conf|ucr. 



It wr>uld be edifying to a degree, ddubtless. if we could put ourselves in 



