FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 



Men's industries have supplied the birds with some new 

 and exceedingly useful building materials, such as furnish- 

 ing those weavers, the orioles and vireos, with strings and 

 yarn for the warp of their fabrications, and the yellow-bird 

 with cotton and wool to make her already downy bed still 

 softer. Instances of abnormally late and early breeding 

 seem to be very common in England, and are coming to 

 be more and more frequently recorded on this side of the 

 Atlantic. This is not to be wondered at, since our oper- 

 ations insure to the birds a continued supply of suitable 

 food, and thus enable them to rear their young at seasons 

 when in a wild state it would not be possible to do so. 

 The English sparrows, breeding all the year round, or near- 

 ly so, in the parks of our coast cities, are a case in point. 



That civilization lias to some extent governed the migra- 

 tions and geographical distribution of many species of our 

 birds not directly warred upon as pot game, for amuse- 

 ment, or because they are obnoxious to crops, could easily 

 be shown had I space allowed me to bring forward illustra- 

 tions ; and when another two centuries have rolled around 

 the effect will be very striking. The mocking and Be- 

 wick's wrens, the rose-breasted grossbeak, chestnut- sided 

 warbler, and other species, have spread northward and be- 

 come more abundant since the time of Wilson and Audu 



