LANGLE-LEAF PAPERS. 51 
as well as of careful study by naturalists, their 
peculiarities have all been catalogued, and 
every intelligent person knows that a hare, by 
crouching flat on a dry gray spot of earth, so 
blends with its surroundings as to become 
almost undistinguishable, and that a quail, sit- 
ting in a handful of dry brown leaves is as 
effectually hidden as if buried. So a grouse 
among the tangled twigs of a bare winter tree 
is a very difficult object to discover. A mead- 
ow-lark, in a sunny clover-field, melts, so to 
speak, into the general confusion of brown, 
green, and gold, so that it becomes indeed a 
“sightless song.” The humming-bird makes 
its nest of lichen, and places it in a tuft of the 
same on some wrinkled bough, usually at or 
near a crotch; and the little bird, while on the 
nest, is so in harmony with its surroundings 
that none but the keenest eye would distin- 
guish her from one of the little ruffled knots 
on the bark beside her. The whippoorwill 
builds no nest. Its eggs are deposited on the 
ground at a place where the bird’s colors and 
those of her eggs perfectly harmonize with the 
general tone of their surroundings. I have 
known this bird to roll her eggs from spot to 
spot while incubating, evidently for the pur- 
pose of keeping them and herself within a 
proper entourage, this being her only means of 
protection from hawks, owls, and other enc- 
mies. The common dove places its shallow, 
ill-made nest in what appear to be the most 
exposed places, but the bluish ash-gray color 
of the bird’s plumage runs so evenly into the 
tone of its surroundings that one might look 
in vain for any sign of a living thing in the 
