372 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science. 
last days of June, 1905, two or three were seen and heard singing on the 
fences about the meadows and along the road at the old home farm. 
Vigo County: Equally common summer resident ; often noted in the fields 
north, east, and south of Terre Haute. 
Monroe County: Probably more common than in either Carroll or Vigo. 
Several pairs could be seen any fine day in late spring or early summer in 
or about the fields north or east of Bloomington. 
158. PrrRaANGA ERYTHROMELAS Vieillot. SCARLET TANGER. (608) 
A common summer resident; chiefly in open woodlands and along the 
streams. 
Carroll County: Arrives from the south about the middle of April to the 
first of May, and remains until in September. October 5, 1878, taken; 
June 17, 1882, set of three fresh eggs: May 3. 1883, saw several males near 
Camden; May 12, first female seen; June 11, found a nest with five eggs, 
two of which were Cowbird’s, about 30 feet from the ground in a beech 
tree in the east woodland on my father’s farm near Burlington; incubation 
had begun. May 5, 1884, first noted, a male and a female; May 11, saw a 
female building her nest, 50 feet up in a tree in Dillen’s woods southeast of 
Camden; April 23, saw a female in Little Deer Creek bottom near Joseph 
Trent's; June 25-July 1, 1905, a male seen in pasture west of house on 
home farm. 
This beautiful bird is of especial interest to all ornithologists and others 
who know about it, as being the bird that kindled in Elliot Coues, when a 
child, an undying interest in bird life. Dr. Coues’s story of the event is so 
interesting and so charmingly written that I cannot refrain from giving it 
here. He says: “I hold this bird in particular, a'’most superstitious, recol- 
lection, as the very first of all the feathered tribe to stir within me those 
emotions that have never ceased to stimulate and gratify my love for birds. 
More years have passed than I care to remember since a little child was 
strolling through an orchard one bright morning in June, filled with mute 
wonder at beauties felt, but neither questioned nor understood. A shout 
from an older companion—‘“There goes a Scarlet Tanager !’’—and the child 
was straining eager, wistful eyes after something that had flashed upon 
his senses for a moment as if from another world, it seemed so bright, so 
beautiful, so strange. What is a Scarlet Tanager? mused the child, whose 
consciousness had flown with the wonderful apparition on wings of ecstasy ; 
but the bees hummed on, the scent of flowers floated by, the sunbeam passed 
across the greensward, and there was no reply—nothing but the echo of a 
mute appeal to Nature, stirring the very depths with an inward thrill. 
That night the vision came again in dreamland, where the strangest things 
are truest and known the best; the child was startled by a ball of fire, 
and fanned to rest again by a sab’e wing. The wax was soft then, and the 
impress grew indelible. Nor would I blur it if I could—not though the 
flight of years has borne sad answers to reiterated questionings—not 
though the wings of hope are tipped with lead and brush the very earth, 
instead of soaring in scanted sunlight.” 
It was the thoughtless killing of a Scarlet Tanager that gave me my first 
pang in relation to the destruction of useful birds. It was many years ago. 
