10 BIRDS. 



for a single season would show many curious incidents 

 A friend of mine opened his box-stove one fall to kin- 

 dle a fire in it, when he beheld in the black interior 

 the desiccated forms of two bluebirds. The birds had 

 probably taken refuge in the chimney during souk 

 cold spring storm, and had come down the pipe to the 

 stove, from whence they were unable to ascend. A 

 peculiarly touching little incident of bird life occurred 

 to a caged female canary. Though unmated, it laid 

 some eggs, and the happy bird was so carried away 

 by her feelings that she would offer food to the eggs, 

 and chatter and twitter, trying, as it seemed, to en- 

 courage them to eat ! The incident is hardly tragic, 

 neither is it comic. 



Certain birds nest in the vicinity of our houses and 

 outbuildings, or even in and upon them, for protec- 

 tion from their enemies, but they often thus expose 

 themselves to a plague of the most deadly character. 



I refer to the vermin with which their nests often 

 swarm, and which kill the young before they are 

 fledged. In a state of nature this probably never 

 happens; at least I have never seen or heard of it 

 happening to nests placed in trees or under rocks. It 

 is the curse of civilization falling upon the birds which 

 come too near man. The vermin, or the germ of the 

 vermin, is probably conveyed to the nest in hen's 

 feathers, or in straws and hairs picked up about the 

 barn or hen-house. A robin's nest upon your porci 

 or in your summer-house will occasionally become an 

 intolerable nuisance from the swarms upon swarms of 

 minute vermin with which it is filled. The parent 

 birds stem the tide as long as they can, but are often 

 compelled to leave the young to their terrible fate. 



One season a phcebe-bird built on a projecting stone 



