Professional and Amateur. 



109 



birds or men. In our daily papers the pugilist figures 

 more largely than the preacher. 



I cannot imagine a positively happy kingbird in 

 a country where there are no worm-fences, those 

 zigzag piles of old rails that invite all the weeds of 

 the region and effectively defy the stingy old farmers 



Kingbird. 



who begrudge every unplanted thing room to grow, 

 and who hate nature generally as they do poisonous 

 snakes. The ornithology of many a farm in Central 

 New Jersey is comprised in the bird-life that collects 

 along these fences. Startling as it may seem, I have 

 knowledge of one such fence — or what remains of it 

 — that is more than a century old. 



On the end of the highest stake of the fence, on 

 the morning of the bird's arrival, this restless fly- 

 catcher takes its stand, and there is just the merest 



