CH. I.] OF WHITE-THROAT. 155 



season, raising himself on the wing and gracefully 

 subsiding again, as if his ordinary flight was too 

 low and commonplace for his buoyant spirits. 



But though the effect of the breeding-season 

 in counteracting the natural wildness of the bird 

 is peculiarly exemplified in the case of the Wood- 

 pigeon, it is by no means confined to that species. 

 Many appear to be more or less sensible of its 

 genial influence. 



I remember finding, when a boy, the nest of a 

 White-throat, which she had constructed in the 

 stem of a tall hemlock. Whilst engaged in the 

 work of incubation, she appeared to be perfectly 

 devoid of fear, and would not only permit my 

 sister and myself to stroke her on her nest, but 

 would actually take food from our hands, thus 

 proving that her tameness was not merely the 

 result of that mysterious o-ropyrj that love for 

 her young, which in the female seems to annihilate 

 all sense of fear, but that, apart from it, she had 

 lost that dread of man by which she would at 

 other times have been more or less influenced. 



The following remarkable anecdote may not 

 be considered out of place here, although it is not 

 improbable that in this instance the bird was actu- 

 ated simply by o-ropyr). 



