282 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
mating dawn of morning, but it is renewed, and still more 
vigorous, during the noonday heat of summer. This 
lively strain is composed of a repetition of short notes, 
which, commencing loud and rapid, and then slowly 
falling, descend almost to a whisper, succeeded by a silence 
of almost half a minute, when the song is again continued 
as before. 
““Tn the village of Cambridge (Massachusetts), I have 
seen one of these azure, almost celestial musicians, regu- 
larly chant to the inmates of a tall dwelling-house from 
the summit of the chimney or the tall fork of the lightning- 
rod. I have also heard a Canary repeat and imitate 
the low lisping trill of the Indigo-bird, whose warble, 
indeed, often resembles that of this species.’ 
““This combination of musical ability, lovely plumage, 
and its seed-eating qualities long since has made the 
Indigo Bunting in danger of extermination, through the 
fact of its being universally, throughout the South, cap- 
tured and sold as a cage-bird, both for home use and for 
export. In that section the bird is called the ‘blue pop,’ 
a corruption of ‘bleu pape,’ or ‘pope,’ of the French. 
“The Cardinal, called ‘ Grosbeak ’ from the thickness and 
size of its bill, is of course a very conspicuous bird wherever 
The Cardi- seen, and therefore has always been a mark for 
nal the ‘arrow of death,’ as Mr. Allen, who knows 
this bird in its native haunts, and its every mood, puts it. 
Some day when you are older you will read his story of it 
as it lives in the deep recesses of the evergreen woods, 
called The Kentucky Cardinal. For though this bird is 
found nesting as far north as Central Park, New York, 
and it has once or twice come to my garden here, and 
