194 ¢ FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 
Men’s industries have supplied the birds with some new 
and exceedingly useful building materials, such as furnish- 
ing those weavers, the orioles and vireos, with strings and 
yarn for the warp of their fabrications, and the yellow-bird 
with cotton and wool to make her already downy bed still 
softer. Instances of abnormally late and early breeding 
seem to be very common in England, and are coming to 
be more and more frequently recorded on this side of the 
Atlantic. This is not to be wondered at, since our oper- 
ations insure to the birds a continued supply of suitable 
food, and thus enable them to rear their young at seasons 
when in a wild state it would not be possible to do so. 
The English sparrows, breeding all the year round, or near- 
ly so, in the parks of our coast cities, are a case in point. 
That civilization has to some extent governed the migra- 
tions and geographical distribution of many species of our 
birds not directly warred upon as pot game, for amuse- 
ment, or because they are obnoxious to crops, could easily 
be shown had I space allowed me to bring forward illustra- 
tions; and when another two centuries have rolled around 
the effect will be very striking. The mocking and Be- 
wick’s wrens, the rose-breasted grossbeak, chestnut- sided 
warbler, and other species, have spread northward and be- 
come more abundant since the time of Wilson and Audu 
