19 



the sportsman's trap might ingulf him by the 

 thousands ; and wholesale netting, as practiced 

 abroad, would well reward those who supply the 

 restaurant larder. The shrike, or butcher-bird, 

 is an admirable matador so far as he goes, and 

 would, no doubt, end in exterminating him, with 

 man's assistance, did he exist in sufficient num- 

 bers. Let us pray, meanwhile, for the advent of 

 a sparrow-bug, or Passer-aphis some insect- 

 scourge such as besets the inanimate world to 

 aid in delivering us from this feathered Philis- 

 tine. 



The chimney-swallows, which last summer 

 awakened me with their chattering and whirring 

 in the chimney, at all times of the night and 

 early morning, will trouble me no more. A wire 

 screen placed across the top of the chimney has 

 rendered a little folding of the hands to sleep 

 possible at five in the morning. The chorus of 

 the Hylodes, or peepers, is yet in store that 

 piercing treble launched against the quiet nights 

 of early spring that nothing even the katydid 

 can equal in strident intensity, and that no earth- 

 ly power can still. Fancy attempting to go to 

 sleep in a country house near a swampful of 

 these shrieking demons ! " It is a plaintive 

 sound, a pure spring melody," says Burroughs, 

 for once apparently forgetting himself, or led 



