IY._BIRDS OF THE BUSHES. 



"The birds around me bopp'd and play'd, 

 Their thoughts I can not measure — 

 But the least motion which they made 

 It seem'd a thrill of pleasure.'"' 



—Wordsworth. 



In his "Tragedies of the NesU," the naturalist and 

 poet- essayist, John Burroughs, asserts that a line five feet 

 from the ground would run above more than half the 

 nests, and one ten feet would bound more than three- 

 fourths of them. 



The observations of students of bird-life have verified 

 the fact that most of the birds build in low situations. 

 The bushes along the country roadsides and in the woods, 

 and bordering the ditches and streams of our prairie 

 regions, have a great number of feathered tenants, which 

 are quite likely to escape the notice of the unobservant. 

 The trained, observer, however, seldom passes such shelters 

 without inspecting them, and thus he finds interesting ob- 

 jects of study where the uninitiated would not even sus- 

 pect their existence. Some of the birds of the bushes are 

 so familiar in manners and attractive in attire that they are 

 comparatively well known; while others equally abun- 

 dant are seldom noted, having shyer dispositions, and 

 little glow of color in their plumage. 



THE SONG SPAEEOW. 



Along the road from my home to the school building in 

 ray native village — a road over which my chosen vocation 

 daily called me for the greater portion of the year — was 

 an old mill. A few years ago the structure was removed, 

 leaving the site vacant beside the pond which furnished 



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