274 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



manner with white. I saw the birds only four 

 times afterward, the last time on the 17th of Feb- 

 ruary. So I say, speaking after the manner of 

 men ; but in truth I can see them now, their white 

 rumps lighting up as they wheel and catch the 

 sun. It pleases me to learn that it is next to 

 impossible to shoot them, and that they are scarce 

 in collections. So may they continue. They were 

 made for better things. 



The most beautiful bird that I found in Ari- 

 zona, though judgments of this kind are of neces- 

 sity liable to revision as one's mood changes, 

 was the Arizona Pyrrhuloxia. I should be glad 

 to give the reader, as well as to have for my own 

 use, an English name for it, but so far as I am 

 aware it has none. It has lived beyond the range 

 of the vernacular. My delight in its beauty was 

 less keen than naturally it would have been, be- 

 cause I had spent my first raptures upon its 

 equally handsome Texas relative of the same 

 name a few weeks before. This was at San An- 

 tonio, in the chaparral just outside the city. I 

 had been listening to a flock of lark sparrows, 

 I remember, and looking at sundry things, where 

 almost everything was new, when all at once I 

 saw before me at the foot of a bush the loveliest 

 bunch of feathers that I had ever set eyes on. 

 Without the least thought of what I was doing 



