ON BOSTON COMMON. 
er 
OvuR Common and Garden are not an ideal 
field of operations for the student of birds. No 
doubt they are rather straitened and public. 
Other things being equal, a modest ornitholo- 
gist would prefer a place where he could stand 
still and look up without becoming himself a 
gazing-stock. But “it is not in man that walk- 
eth to direct his steps;” and if we are ap- 
pointed totake our daily exercise in a city park, 
we shall very likely find its narrow limits not 
destitute of some partial compensations. This, 
at least, may be depended upon, — our disap- 
pointments will be on the right side of the ac- 
count; we shall see more than we have antici- 
pated rather than less, and so our pleasures will, 
as it were, come tous double. I recall, for ex- 
ample, the heightened interest with which I be- 
held my first Boston cat-bird; standing on the 
back of one of the seats in the Garden, steady- 
ing himself with oscillations of his tail, —a con- 
veniently long balance-pole, — while he peeped 
