BIRDS AND BIRDS 143 



alighting down in the stubblo occasionally, it is 

 pretty sure to be the shrike. 



V 



Nature never tires of repeating and multiplying 

 the same species. She makes a million bees, a mil- 

 lion birds, a million mice or rats, or other animals, 

 so nearly alike that no eye can tell one from an- 

 other; but it is rarely that she issues a small and a 

 large edition, as it were, of the same species. Yet 

 she has done it in a few cases among the birds with 

 hardly more difference than a foot-note added or 

 omitted. The cedar-bird, for instance, is the Bolie- 

 mian waxwing or chatterer in smaller type, copied 

 even to the minute, wax-like appendages that bedeck 

 the ends of the wing-quills. It is about one third 

 smaller, and a little lighter in color, owing perhaps 

 to the fact that it is confined to a warmer latitude, 

 its northward range seeming to end about where that 

 of its larger brother begins. Its flight, its note, its 

 manners, its general character and habits, are almost 

 identical with those of its prototype. It is confined 

 exclusively to this continent, while the chatterer is 

 an Old World bird as well, and ranges the northern 

 parts of both continents. The latter comes to us 

 from the hyperborean regions, brought down occa- 

 sionally by the great cold waves that originate in 

 those high latitudes. It is a bird of Siberian and 

 Alaskan evergreens, and passes its life for tlie most 

 part far beyond the haunts of man. I have never 

 Been the bird, but small bands of them make excup- 



