166 WESTERN SERIES OF READERS. 



Do not the towhee, and the humming-bird, and 

 the song-sparrow, and many others, work on the 

 principle of making the nest to suit the color of 

 its settings? 



We catch the towhees playing with the white 

 rags we place in sheltered nooks for them, the 

 whole year round. We have had them to build 

 almost entire nests of white. Once we stamped 

 our name on ever so many bits of cloth, and left 

 them in the birds' way. What happened you 

 may guess. Towhees from all around made nests 

 that belonged to us. The neighbors told us their 

 towhees had our name stuck in plain sight on 

 different nests, and wondered at the strange in- 

 cident. We said nothing, but it was understood 

 between us and the towhees. Once we induced a 

 towhee to lay a shred of news-paper in her new 

 nest with an advertisement of one of our bird- 

 books on it. We watched her with great satisfac- 

 tion while she made it secure with straws and 

 sticks. When she left the nest for more material, 

 we slipped up to see the effect of our book review 

 on the parlor-table, as it were, of one of the very 

 best birds it treated of. Imagine our surprise to 

 find an advertisement of a certain kind of soap in 

 plain sight, and nothing else. It had not oc- 

 curred to us to look on the opposite side of the 



