250 THE INVITATION. 



Thoreau relates that in the woods of Maine the 

 Canada jay will sometimes make its meal with the 

 lumbermen, taking the food out of their hands. 



Yet, notwithstanding the birds have come to look 

 upon man as their natural enemy, there can be little 

 doubt that civilization is on the whole favorable to 

 their increase and perpetuity, especially to the 

 smaller species. With man come flies and moths, 

 and insects of all kinds in greater abundance ; new 

 plants and weeds are introduced, and, with the clear- 

 ing up of the country, are sowed broadcast over the 

 land. 



The larks and snow-buntings that come to us from 

 the North, subsist almost entirely upon the seeds of 

 grasses and plants ; and how many of our more com- 

 mon and abundant species are field-birds, and entire 

 strangers to deep forests ? 



In Europe some birds have become almost domes- 

 ticated, like the house-sparrow, and in our own coun- 

 try the cliff-swallow seem to have entirely abandoned 

 ledges and shelving rocks, as a place to nest, for the 

 caves and projections of farms and other out-build- 

 ings. 



After one has made the acquaintance of most of 

 the land-birds, there remain the sea-shore and its 

 treasures. How little one knows of the aquatic 

 fowls, even after reading carefully the best authori- 

 ties, was recently forced home to my mind by the 

 Allowing circumstance: I was spending a vacation 

 in the interior of New York, when one day a 



