10 BIRDS. 
for a single season would show many curious incidents. 
A friend of mine opened his box-stove one fall to kin- 
dle a fire in it, when he beheld in the black interior 
the desiccated forms of two bluebirds. The birds had 
probably taken refuge in the chimney during some 
cold spring storm, and had come down the pipe to the 
stove, from whence they were unable to ascend. A 
peculiarly touching little incident of bird life occurred 
to a caged female canary. Though unmated, it laid 
some eggs, and the happy bird was so carried away 
by her feelings that she would offer food to the eggs, 
and chatter and twitter, trying, as it seemed, to en- 
courage them to eat! The incident is hardly tragic, 
neither is it comic. 
Certain birds nest in the vicinity of our houses and 
outbuildings, or even in and upon them, for protec- 
tion from their enemies, but they often thus expose 
themselves to a plague of the most deadly character. 
I refer to the vermin with which their nests often 
swarm, and which kill the young before they are 
fledged. In a state of nature this probably never 
happens ; at least I have never seen or heard of it 
happening to nests placed in trees or under rocks. It 
is the curse of civilization falling upon the birds which 
come too near man. ‘The vermin, or the germ of the 
vermin, is probably conveyed to the nest in hen’s 
feathers, or in straws and hairs picked up about the 
barn or hen-house. A robin’s nest upon your porch 
or in your summer-house will occasionally become an 
intolerable nuisance from the swarms upon swarms of 
minute vermin with which it is filled. The parent 
birds stem the tide as long as they can, but are often 
compelled to leave the young to their terrible fate. 
One season a pheebe-bird built on a projecting stone 
