WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



brush of alder, black ash, and striped maple spread 

 the curving palm-like branches of the sumachs — 

 the red with its '' stag-horn '' tops, the yellow, whose 

 blossoms are so richly redolent of beeswax, and the 

 poisonous one. At the cleared edge of the patch, 

 too, where the ditch is, grows that other pretty but 

 pestilent rhus — the poison ivy. Right in among 

 it a Maryland yellow-throat made his home and 

 sang and shouted his ''Where'd ye get it? What 

 of it?" as long as there were eggs or fledglings in 

 the snug basket sunk into the grass beneath the 

 ivy's feverish shade; but he has not been heard 

 for a month, and no doubt is now back in the State 

 he is named for, or some other Southern haunt, 

 telling tales, '' 'neath the jasmine's shade," of the 

 little swampy thicket which was his summer 

 resort, and whose full beauty he did not wait to 

 see. 



Do you not know the yellow-throat? He is a 

 tiny, ground-keeping warbler, with a black, awl- 

 shaped beak and pink- white legs, and with a jet- 

 black mask across his forehead and along the sides 

 of his head, through which his eyes peer with quiz- 

 zical brilliancy ; but this mask, by which he is so 

 easily recognized, the ladies of his family are not 

 permitted to wear, and even the gentlemen must 



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