THE OSPREY. 



Ill 



printed was an article for one of Messrs. Harper's 

 publications, and I made the pictures for it. That 

 was my debut." 



"Then your work went hand in hand?" 



"Certainly. The one was the stimulant of the 

 other. We all grew up together. The days spent in 

 my room when I was ill helped me. I think I 

 studied flowers then, so that their forms and colors 

 were indelibly impressed on my mind. When I was 

 older I made a small bunch of flowers in wax. Not 

 a detail escaped me. I made moulds of all kinds of 

 leaves. Once I put together a rose, some sprigs of 

 mignonette and heliotrope in wax, and gave them to 

 my dear old friend, Henry Ward Beecher. He was 

 delighted with my flowers, and put them on his 

 study table. Presently Mrs. Beecher came in. She 

 ran to the flowers and broke the rose all to pieces." 



"How could she have done that?" I asked. 



" It must have been with her nose. She wanted 

 to smell the rose." 



Then Mr. Hamilton Gibson showed me some mon- 

 ster drawings of flowers — Brobdingnagian ones. The 

 flowers opened and closed when you pulled a string, 

 showing their interior structure. Here were bees or 

 other insects, and they flew into the flowers, collected 

 the honey, and, above all, the pollen, and buzzed 

 out again. He explained to me how plant life would 

 perish if it were not for certain insects, which bring 

 a new e.xistence to flowers ; for without these winged 

 helpers there would be no longer any varieties of 

 flowers or seeds. 



You will see, then, that in tracing the beginning of 

 Mr. Hamilton Gibson's career what I mean by hark- 

 ing backward. 



I am certain, too, that in every boy and girl there 

 is something good and excellent. Like the flower 

 visited by the bee, all it wants is impulse, Then, as 

 Mr. Hamilton Gibson explained it to me, will come 

 the blossoming, and lastly perfect fruitage. 



P 



LIFE HISTORY OF THE PROTHONOTARY WARBLER. 



W. E. LOUCKS. 

 Arranged for publication by the Author from a report made to the Illinois State Labratory of Natural History. 



Part Two — The Nest. 



ROTHONOTARY WARBLERS confine them- many decaying stumps. While both of these are 

 selves almost exclusively to decayed stumps acceptable to the warbler for nesting purposes, I am 

 and driftwood in search of food, but occasion- inclined to believe the latter situation, is the more 



often chosen. Throughout the greater part of the 



ally venture up the trunks of trees and hunt for in 



THREE STUMPS WITH TYPICAL NESTING CAVITIES OF THE PROTHONOTARY WARBLER. 



FORTY NESTS WERE COUNTED ON ONE SMALL ISLAND IN THE ILLINOIS RIVER. 



sects concealed in the bark. I have never observed year these bottoms are overflowed, making it im- 



them feeding among the leaves, as is the habit of possible to visit them without the aid of a skiff or 



many of our Warblers. The flight of the birds is canoe. 



swift and decided, slightly undulating when crossing As previously stated, soon after mating the birds 



an open or flying for some distance among the trees, begin to build their nests, usually, in central Illinois, 



There are two kinds of bottom-land in which the about the middle of May, although many pairs do not 



Prothonotary breeds; the willow swamp consisting begin until the latter part of this month. I have 



entirely of a heavy growth of large willows, inter- found nests under construction on the 12th of May, 



spersed here and there with rotten stubs ; and the but this is exceptional in this part of the State. Mr. 



bottom-land covered with a forest of elm, oak, cotton- Wm. Brewster says in his account of this bird, that 



wood, and maple, with an occasional willow and Mr. Robert Ridgway found a nest with four fresh 



