the pig ? Yesterday I saw several of her brood along 

 the meadow fence hawking for flies. They were not 

 far from my cabbage patch. 



I hope that a pair of them returns to me another 

 spring, and that they come early. Any bird that 

 deigns to dwell under roof of mine commands my 

 friendship ; but no other bird takes phcebe's place in 

 my affections, there is so much in him to like and 

 he speaks for so much of the friendship of nature. 



" Humble and inoffensive bird " he has been called 

 by one of our leading ornithologies because he 

 comes to my pig-pen ! " Inoffensive " ? this bird with 

 the cabbage butterfly in his beak ? The faint and 

 damning praise ! And " humble " ? There is not a 

 humble feather on his body. Humble to those who 

 see the pen and not the bird. But to me why, the 

 bird has made a palace of my pig-pen. 



The very pig seems less a pig because of this ex- 

 quisite association ; and the lowly work of feeding 

 the creature has been turned by phcebe into an aes- 

 thetic course in bird study. 



