BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 101 



My faith in his ability to defend himself against dogs became 

 so strong that upon the application of several parties with 

 vicious canines, to show what their special dog could do, I 

 challenged any and all, one at a time, to attack him. One of 

 the largest in the city was allowed to open the tournament in 

 the presence of many witnesses. Sandie was taken out onto 

 the lawn in front of my home, and after various comical 

 familiarities in the way of eating unheard of things offered 

 him. posed quietly on one foot, and having closed his eyes as 

 an expressive hint that he was satisfied for the time to suspend 

 performances, when we all withdrew a little distance, and a 

 bouncing dog — a cross between a mastiff and Newfoundland — 

 was shown the stilted biped, and stayed not a moment in his 

 '•going for him.'' Sandie, whose whole ^emeanor was under 

 the closest notice, partially opened his windward eye, but 

 remained standing upon the single foot, without in the 

 slightest changing his position, his doubly curved neck, head 

 and bill, drawn well back upon his body, till the onrushing 

 dog was within a half of a yard of him, when his closed, 

 acutely pointed bill and head shot out like an arrow from a 

 bow, and the ferocious canine doubled up into the shape of a 

 letter "C," and peeling for home, howling as if in the agonies 

 of an attack of colic, left the sponge high in air, never again 

 to challenge a Sandhill Crane to combat. Never afterwards 

 would any one who witnessed the short ' 'mill*' permit his dog 

 to give or accept a challenge from Sandie. Sometime after 

 this I presented him to the Central Park Museum, in New York 

 City, where it was my great privilege to see him after a number 

 of years, and again several years later, on my way to Europe 

 in 1882, found him without any indications of increasing age 

 or infirmities, and Mr. Conklin, the manager who received him 

 from me originally, assured me that Sandie was all right, and 

 appeared to greatly enjoy the considerable numbers of his 

 species associated with him in that paradise of bird incar- 

 ceration. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Bill compressed; lower mandible not as deep towards the 

 tip as the upper; gonys nearly straight, in the same line with 

 the basal portion of the bill; commissure decidedly curving 

 from beyond the middle to the tip, where it is even, not 

 crenated; color bluish -gray; primaries and spurious quills 

 dark plumbeous-brown; the shafts white; cheeks and chin 

 whitish; entire top of head bare of feathers, warty and granu- 



