150 IN PAIRING TIME 



not particularly extravagant considered as a feather 

 contortionist, but there is at that time no bird more 

 overflowing with the wild joy of life, or who lays 

 under contribution a larger space of heaven and 

 earth wherein to express it. 



Once I bought a book issued with an attractive 

 title, and written by a man who filled a large portion 

 of the title page with a list of his distinctions, 

 academical and others, and a large portion of his 

 book with reproductions of photographs of the wild 

 life that haunts the show-cases of our museums. I 

 was pained and disgusted to find every bird that 

 could be eaten, as well as some that I should have 

 imagined could not, therein treated of insistently 

 from the culinary standpoint, and with an animal 

 gusto for which the author appeared to have received 

 no academical recognition. He fraternises with the 

 Song-thrush as being, like himself, an eater of snails. 

 He detests the Blackbird so much that he could wish 

 a certain peasant's taste for Blackbird pie were a 

 common one ; perhaps it is. A fig, he says, is the 

 Garden- warbler's * 'grand passion." He notes with 

 rejoicing that the farmer uses the young of the 

 Greenfinch to fill his "ferret's long, lean stomach." 

 He commiserates the sentimentalist who raises an 

 outcry against the caging of birds. The breasts of 

 young Sparrows stewed are "good enough," he 

 avers ; "the bird is also useful for trap-shooting and 

 the feeding of ferrets." The Chaffinch, "a living 

 chromo-lithograph," he consigns to Germany and 

 destruction. The Brambling he states to be 

 "careful of his useless carcase." Among Linnets 

 "your sweetest pet is the young nestling reft 



