CHILDREN S ROOM IN SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 557 



and the condor, and the different-sized owls, by and by. He wonders 

 and laughs, too, at the curious birds. Truly they arc a funny 1<>1. 

 Some of them have fans that fold. Others have veils, aprons, crowns. 

 lappets, armor, and what not. The toucan has such an absurd big bill. 

 The black skimmer's flat > > i 1 1 is set the wrong way. A queer paradise 

 bird has one tail where it should be, besides two very long tails that 

 are half saw and half feather, and that start from behind his ears. 

 Then there is a row of little bat-parrakeets that sleep with their heads 

 hanging down. The child wonders why the blood doesn't run to their 

 heads, and how the umbrella bird can see through the thick tangle of 

 his head covering. Almost all the curious birds have funny attach- 

 ments, something they don't seem to need — all except the poor apteryx 

 from Australia, wdio has much less than he should have, because he is 

 left over from some undeveloped age, with paltry, half-formed feath- 

 ers, and no wings at all. The child pities the apteryx — he looks so 

 timid and sorry — and the card tells us he is often killed by dogs. 

 because he can not fly. He is so different from his tine neighbor, the 

 laughing jackass, whose expression is always humorous, and who seems 

 always about to make merry with the whole queer lot. 



Just below these is a shelf of " Bright-colored Birds." If the child 

 is a little girl, here she will linger long. The vividly blue cotinga of 

 British Guiana, the beautiful — the most beautiful — parrakeet, the rose 

 cockatoo of Australia, the elegant minivet, and the crimson-winged 

 lory — these she will love with all her inborn adoration of beautiful 

 adornment, and yearn for them in her dreams. I hope she will not 

 want the wings for her hat, but I should hardly blame her if she did, 

 for their beauty is the splendid and lavish kind that nature gives to 

 flowers, and that nature, and nature only, has ever learned how to 

 bestow. To me the mandarin duck seems the gem of this collection — 

 a fowl whose dress is so Chinese in its cut and coloring that one won- 

 ders whether he has really imitated the mandarins or they him. 



And now come the "Common Birds of Europe" and the "Familiar 

 Birds of the United States." The child has yearned long to see the 

 raven, the magpie, the starling, and the jackdaw of his storybooks, and 

 the English lark and robin from which, long ago, our native meadow 

 singer and redbreast were named b}^ a people heartsick and homesick 

 for their own far lands. The curlew, the rook, and the lapwing, these, 

 too, are among the European birds, while the phoebe, the bittern, the 

 kingfisher, the bobwhite, and the bobolink are among their Amer- 

 ican cousins, as well as our own lark and robin, not forgetting the 

 beautiful but cruel blue jay, and the tiny ruby-throated humming- 

 bird, so familiar to us all. 



The child is proud of his own birds. Perhaps he wishes they were 

 more gaudily colored, and wonders why parrakeets and pink cockatoos 

 do not dwell in his own woods and fields. Still, there is the gay car- 



