"TRICKS AND MANNERS" OF A CAT-BIRD. 83 



efforts were remarkable. She raised her body 

 as high as possible on four of her legs, while the 

 other two, the fore-legs, or arms, were thrown 

 out wide, as though to embrace him, as, by 

 the way, she would have done, if it had reached 

 a battle. She then raised her two pairs of 

 wings in a most peculiar way, one above the 

 other, all four in a row. The rear end of the 

 body was curled up like a bow, and her whole 

 frame swayed back and forth in a furious rage. 

 It was a most curious and wonderful exhibition 

 of passion in a creature not three inches long. 



The cat-bird observed all this display with 

 interest as great as our own. He studied her 

 from every side, and tried again and again to 

 penetrate the glass. Every way he turned she 

 was ready for him, facing him always and per- 

 fectly prepared to grapple with him ; and strange 

 as it sounds, I am not sure of the result of the 

 battle had no glass intervened. She would 

 have sprung at his throat, no doubt, and held on 

 with those terrible sharp-spined arms, till, un- 

 able to rid himself of them, he would have been 

 choked. 



Happily no such tragedy occurred, and the 

 next tenant of the glass shade was, if possible, 

 more interesting still to the bird. This was an 

 enormous green grasshopper which passed the 

 time in crawling up the sides of his prison, and 



