UMBRELLAS AND OTHER THINGS. 69 
find the right one. They do this almost every day, 
never learning to count or to mark the crack in any 
way. This is very stupid of the towhees, and we laugh 
at their shrill squeaks, and their silly way of trying 
every hole without regard to their size. 
These towhees are full of curiosity. There is a rab- 
bit’s cage in the yard, and the birds try all day to get 
in. Sometimes we leave the door ajar, and in they hop. 
‘Then what atime. Squealing and fluttering, they fly 
about as if they were scared nearly to death. We let 
them out again, and they will hop to a log near by 
and preen themselves, and in five minutes they have 
forgotten what happened. Back they fly to the cage 
again, and are not satisfied till they find a way to 
get in. 
They wait coaxingly about the door, as if they would 
give anything for a ticket of admission. Once a curi- 
ous little towhee squeezed itself into the owl’s cage, 
and we had hard work to get it out alive; and then 
what should the stupid little thing do but go straight 
for the canary’s cage, hanging under a tree on the lawn. 
If we want to hold a towhee in our hands for any reason, 
we have but to set a cage on the grass with the door 
open, and in a few minutes we have the bird. 
We are reminded of something about birds which 
John Webster wrote more than two hundred years ago. 
He must have been a bird lover. When speaking ot 
a summer bird-cage in a garden, he observed, “The 
birds that are without, despair to get in; and the birds 
