Wir: 
THE SONG-SPARROW. 
Tne American song-sparrow is a peculiar lover of old 
fields where Nature is fast reasserting herself after the tem- 
porary rule of man. The tumbling, lichen-patched stone 
fences; the gray cattle-paths diverging from the muddy 
bar-way to those parts of the pasture where the grass is 
sweetest; the weedy banks of the sluggish brook wind- 
‘ing indolently among mossy bowlders and tangled thickets 
and patches of fragrant herbage—are all congenial to it, 
and are its chosen resort. Yet it is so common throughout 
most of the United States that you may find it almost any- 
where—skulking about the currant and raspberry bushes 
in the village gardens; taking a riotous bath in some pool 
by the roadside, about whose rim, perhaps, the ice still lin- 
gers; hastening to the top of a forest-tree to plume its 
dripping feathers, and shake off at once the crystal water 
and a erystal song. 
Our favorite is the very first bird to greet us in the 
