THE BLACK-THROATED BUNTING. 585 



The report of the gun interrupted the song; and in a few 

 moments the fallen bird, warm, and quivering with the 

 last throes of life, was in my hand. "How cruel!" many 

 would exclaim. "Yes," from one point of view; but most 

 emphatically, " no," from another. True, every life which 

 God has ordered is precious, and "not a Sparrow falleth to 

 the ground without Him;" but is not the bird or beast of 

 prey, by the law of its nature, under necessity of subsisting 

 on innocent lives? And has not my thirst for knowledge 

 greater claim than the craw of a Hawk ? Besides, as Dr. 

 Brehm has well said, to die in the midst of one's song is a 

 death which even a poet might crave. 



But to my bird. He is a beauty. With a peculiarly 

 thick, but not unsightly, bill, he is rather long and slender 

 for a Sparrow. About 6.50 long; forehead, greenish-olive; 

 nape and neck, bluish-ash; eye-brows and moustache, yel- 

 low, continuing for some distance in white lines; chin, 

 white; throat, black; breast, yellow; upper parts after the 

 manner of the Sparrows, with a bright patch of chestnut- 

 red on the shoulder; under parts, dull-white. This is the 

 coloring of the male. The female lacks the black throat, 

 the bright red patch on the shoulder, and has a mere tinge 

 of the yellow parts; she has, moreover, a noticeably narrow, 

 dark streak of about half an inch at the lower corners of 

 the mandible, and narrow broken streaks of brown on the 

 breast. 



If I am not mistaken, the female has a song one differ- 

 ent from that of the male, though I cannot now describe it. 

 One afternoon, as a friend and I were ransacking a field oc- 

 cupied by these birds, in search of their nests, we noticed 

 a female, singing in a bush. My comrade was a good marks- 

 man, and took deliberate aim, and, as we thought, the bird 

 dropped. After searching the spot thoroughly, however, 



