XXXIX 



THE SUMMER TANAGER 



WHEN I moved to Tennessee one of the first things I 

 did was to visit an old friend who had moved into 

 the hill district of Tennessee, purchased land, and was 

 conducting a rural school. He was working on the unique 

 basis of earning his living from the soil and inviting the 

 neighbors' children who had no good opportunity for edu- 

 cation to come to his school without money and without 

 price. 



As one means of earning a livelihood he had two or 

 three swarms of bees. Knowing that I had been interested 

 in bees most of my life, he invited me to examine them, 

 stating that they were not doing well. We went out and 

 looked through his hives and surely enough I found all 

 the swarms weak, yet I saw no evidence of disease. I could 

 not understand this, because there were plenty of flowers 

 near by and I could see no reason why they should not 

 be strong and gathering an abundance of honey. I ex- 

 amined the hives for moths but there were none. I was 

 at loss to understand the situation, so we sat down on a 

 .log near the bees to discuss the matter. 



We had not been there long before I saw a beautiful 

 red bird of a variety I had never known light on a twig 

 near .the bees, and while I was trying to decide whether it 



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