124 EYE-BEAMS 



tree. The feeding crow regarded him a mo- 

 ment, and then flew up to his side, as if to give 

 him a turn at the meat. But he refused to run 

 the risk. He evidently looked upon the whole 

 thing as a delusion and a snare, and presently 

 went away, and his mate followed him. Then 

 I placed the bone in one of the main forks of 

 the tree, but the crows kept at a safe distance 

 from it. Then I put it back to the ground, 

 but they grew more and more suspicious; some 

 evil intent in it all, they thought. Finally, a 

 dog carried ofi" the bone, and the crows ceased 

 to visit the tree. 



III. A sparrow's mistake 



If one has always built one's nest upon the 

 ground, and if one comes of a race of ground- 

 builders, it is a risky experiment to build in a 

 tree. The conditions are ' vastly different. 

 One of my near neighbors, a little song- spar- 

 row, learned this lesson the past season. She 

 grew ambitious; she departed from the tradi- 

 tions of her race, and placed her nest in a tree. 

 Such a pretty spot she chose, too — the pen- 

 dent cradle formed by the interlaced sprays of 

 two parallel branches of a Norway spruce. 

 These branches shoot out almost horizontally; 

 indeed, the lower ones become quite so in 

 spring, and the side shoots with which they are 

 clothed droop down, forming the slopes of min- 

 iature ridges; where the slopes of two branches 

 join, a little valley is formed which often looks 



