January 
the call-note of the robin. It is found in this 
region the year round, but its presence in the 
Park is chiefly during the cold weather. 
Birds easily adapt themselves to circum- 
stances; and, although I was brought up to 
believe that I should never, under any con- 
ditions, find doves alighting on trees, it is a 
common sight in the Park: probably due to 
the fact that there are scarcely any buildings in 
the vicinity ; yet even such as there are they 
studiously avoid, always flocking to the maples 
and elms, as they were doubtless wont to do in 
their predomesticated state. 
There is no virility about a dove: just a mass 
of meat, feathers, and flabby good-nature ; too 
inoffensive to be interesting ; for an object that 
it is impossible to hate, it is impossible to love. 
As white is to black, so are doves to crows—a 
rather favorite fowl of mine, though as common 
as sin, of which it is a sort of wingéd symbol. 
Coarse-fibred, harsh-voiced, and villainous as it 
is, it is a broad and solid dash of color that 
could be ill spared in the landscape. How 
tersely and vividly descriptive those few words 
of Shakespeare : 
‘* Light thickens, and the crow 
Makes wing to the rooky wood ;” 
37 
