MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 15 



fathoms of crisp blue air. The hostility of all smaller 

 birds makes the moral character of the crow, for all his 

 deaconlike demeanor and garb, somewhat questionable. 

 He could never sally forth without insult. The golden 

 robins, especially, would chase him as far as I could fol- 

 low with my eye, making him duck clumsily to avoid 

 their importunate bills. I do not believe, however, that 

 he robbed any nests hereabouts, for the refuse of the 

 gas-works, which, in our free-and-easy community, is 

 allowed to poison the river, supplied him with dead 

 ale wives in abundance. I used to watch him making 

 his periodical visits to the salt-marshes and coming back 

 with a fish in his beak to his young savages, who, no 

 doubt, like it in that condition which makes it savory to 

 the Kanakas and other corvine races of men. 



Orioles are in great plenty with me. I have seen 

 seven males flashing about the garden at once. A 

 merry crew of them swing their hammocks from the 

 pendulous boughs. During one of these latter years, 

 when the canker-worms stripped our, elms as bare as 

 winter, these birds went to the trouble of rebuilding 

 their unroofed nests, and chose for the purpose trees 

 which are safe from those swarming vandals, such as the 

 ash and the button-wood. One year a pair (disturbed, 

 I suppose, elsewhere) built a second nest in an elm, 

 within a few yards of the house. My friend, Edward E. 

 Hale, told me once that the oriole rejected from his web 

 all strands of brilliant color, and I thought it a striking 

 example of that instinct of concealment noticeable in 

 many birds, though it should seem in this instance that 

 the nest was amply protected by its position from all 

 marauders but owls and squirrels. Last year, however, 

 I had the fullest proof that Mr. Hale was mistaken. 

 A pair of orioles built on the lowest trailer of a weeping 

 elm, which hung within ten feet of our drawing-room 



