MAMMALS OF MINNESOTA. 185 
‘‘Hor several days the wheel grated on its axle. This 
afforded Hespie great delight, and her own little warble was 
completely lost in the harsher sound. It was pretty much as it 
is with some of the modern methods of praise, as when the 
vocal is subordinated to the instrumental, a mere murmur of 
song, on which the organist comes down as with the sound of 
many waters. A drop of oil, and the sound of the friction 
stopped. This quite excited her temper, and she bit at the 
wires of her wheel most viciously. <A little device was hit upon 
which set her in good humor again. A strip of stout writing 
paper, half an inch wide, was pinned down in such a way that 
its clean-cut upper edge pressed against the wires of the wheel, 
making with its revolution a pleasant purring sound. It was 
on the principle of the old-time watchman’s rattle, and the old 
toy known as a cricket. 
‘‘This for a while greatly delighted the capricious creature, 
and she made the wheel almost fly ; at the same time, in unison 
with the whirr of the wheel, was her own soft, cheery warble. 
It was very low, yet very distinct. I remember once on a 
larger scale witnessing an analogous sight, when, unseen, I 
entered a room in which was a woman spinning wool, and sing- 
ing at the top of, her voice, in keeping with the loud whirring 
of the spinning wheel. Without her wheel the domestic life of 
little Hespie would be rather monotonous. * * * We next 
shut her out of the wheel by corking up the entrance. She 
worked desperately at the closed aperture ; then in despair 
gave vent to a piercing little cry. It was surprizing what a 
strange pleasure this sound afforded me, it showed so clearly 
the difference in the timbre or quality of the sound of distress 
from that which I have called its singing. She was a good 
deal excited, and ran frantically into and out of her little bed- 
box, which had a hole at each end. Soon this tiny gust of rage 
passed over. She now, though running about her cage, indulg- 
ing in little gambols, indicating grace and agility, struck off 
into a truly beautiful strain of song. It occupied about three 
minutes, and had in it considerable scope and variety. First, 
there was a clearly enunciated expression like that of the 
cooing of a turtle dove, a soft note with a deliberate slowness. 
This changed into a series of more rapid notes strangely sug- 
gesting the not so weird-like, the conchy clamor of the Ameri- 
can cuckoo (Coccyzus), then closing with a series of short, rapid 
sounds like the tapping of a woodpecker on a tree.” ‘‘A very 
noticeable fact was, that a great deal of this little creature’s 
—12 
