72 THE Brrps Asour Us. 
Some years ago I suggested that the wrens had a 
limited profane vocabulary of their own, reaching this 
conclusion after watching a Carolina undergo some 
mishaps. This may all be a wild fancy, but there are 
very few birds but have expressions of anger, utter- 
ances indicative of disgust and allied emotions, and 
all this is but one remove from poor weak humanity. 
The Warbling Vireo brings us back to town, but it 
must not be supposed that this bird has no other home 
than in the trees of our village streets. You can find 
them along many a country road that has, as it should 
have, a fair complement of way-side trees. You can 
find them, too, in the yards of our farm-houses, and 
certainly wherever there is a fine old buttonwood, 
planted in the days of our great-great-grandfathers. 
About such a tree the warbling vireo can spend its 
whole seven months’ sojourn and have no occasion 
to leave it. There is, not far from Philadelphia, a 
buttonwood so large—thirteen feet in diameter—that 
a pair of these birds would require all summer to go 
over every twig, and two pairs might be living in its 
branches and not necessarily meet. 
The warbling vireo comes to us in early spring 
without any flourish of trumpets. It has been before, 
and knows every nook and corner of our leafy ways. 
There is not a branch of any village maple, no droop- 
ing limb of any church-yard elm, no clustered trees 
upon the common, or stately rows of pines about our 
houses, but the warbler knows full well; and at home 
the moment he reaches us, he goes forthwith upon 
his musical rounds, and, gentle as a spirit though he 
seems, dealing death to the insect hordes that Nature 
