Song Birds and Water Fowl 
Mr. Elliott Coues expresses it, ‘‘set a stigma 
upon the family name.’’ It is an instance, not 
infrequent, where one may suffer for the sins of 
his contemporaneous relatives quite as much as 
for the sins of his ancestors. Undoubtedly, a 
bad physical odor spreads no faster than a good 
one; the scent of the skunk cabbage radiates 
no more rapidly than that of the rose. But, in 
the moral world, it sometimes seems as if the 
law of dispersion were founded on variable 
dynamics, that the odor of an evil deed could 
diffuse itself more quickly than a virtuous per- 
fume. Scandal rides post-haste, and a breath 
of suspicion has more energy of radiation than 
a perfect gale of compliment. Certainly, in the 
feathered tribe, the merits of the European 
species do not seem to reach this country with 
the facility of their occasional mal-odorous traits. 
In the matter of architecture, too, while our 
own cuckoos are as yet very indifferent build- 
ers, they are distinctly in advance of the Eu- 
ropean varieties, which simply build no nest 
at all, but habitually leave their eggs in the 
nests of other species. Their impulses, in this 
country, are plainly for higher things; and if 
a being is to be judged not so much by what 
he is as by what he aims to be, our sympathies 
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