144 EASY-CHAIR MEMORIES 



He is called L'ecrivain in France, and in Shrop- 

 shire the writing-master^ on account of the 

 irregular lines on the eggs. The general 

 character of the yellow-hammer may be summed 

 up in a few lines. He is cheerful and sociable, 

 and will follow you from bush to bush, par- 

 ticularly if he is conscious that you are watch- 

 ing him, and admiring his pretty person and 

 monotonous little song. He mingles freely 

 with other birds, especially in the winter. He 

 is quarrelsome and pugnacious. His sociability 

 (as well as his quarrelsomeness) is well illustrated 

 in the following incident in the life of one of 

 these adventurous little birds which came under 

 my own observation. Walking across the 

 common not long ago, one of us picked up 

 a crippled yellow-hammer. We thought at first 

 that his wing was broken, but it proved to 

 be not so bad as that. It was so injured, 

 however, that he could not fly. We put him 

 into a cage and fed him on canary -seed. 

 When the wing was strong enough he was 

 placed in an outdoor aviary with a number 

 of canaries ; but as the birds had started 

 housekeeping, and the yellow - hammer was 

 still awkward in his flight, he sometimes, 



