BIRDS AND BIRDS. 163 



we have. Our neutral-tinted birds, like him, as a 

 rule, are our finest songsters ; but he has no song or 

 call, uttering only a fine bead-like note on taking 

 flight This note is the cedar-berry rendered back in 

 sound. When the ox-heart cherries, which he has 

 only recently become acquainted with, have had time 

 to enlarge his pipe and warm his heart, I shall ex- 

 pect more music from him. ^ But in lieu of music, 

 what a pretty compensation are those minute, almost 

 artificial-like, plumes of orange and vermilion that 

 tip the ends of his primaries. Nature could not give 

 him these and a song too. She has given the hum- 

 ming-bird a jewel upon his throat, but no song, save 

 the hum of his wings. 



Another bird that is occasionally borne to us on 

 the crest of the cold waves from the frozen zone, 

 and that is repeated on a smaller scale in a permanent 

 resident, is the pine grosbeak ; his alter ego, reduced 

 in size, is the purple finch, which abounds in the 

 higher latitudes of the temperate zone. The color 

 and form of the two birds are again essentially the 

 same. The females and young males of both species 

 are of a grayish-brown like the sparrow, while in the 

 old males this tint is imperfectly hidden beneath a 

 coat of carmine, as if the color had been poured upon 

 their heads, where it is strongest, and so oozed down 

 and through the rest of the plumage. Their tails 

 are considerably forked, their beaks cone-shaped and 

 heavy, and their flight undulating. Those who have 

 heard the grosbeak, describe its song as similar to 



