146 AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY 



only reply that I could get in answer to my expostulation was: 



"He wants beans!" 



"But he can not raise beans under the shade of those oak trees," I 

 answered, but he only reiterated: 



"He wants beans." 



So I tried to incite him with a little compassion for the noble vine 

 that is none too plentiful in this section, owing to other provident 

 mortals who "want beans." 



• "Is yer bitter-sweet good fer anything? What can ye do with it," he 

 finally interrogated, and of course I was nonplussed, for the vine is 

 neither "fish, flesh, fowl, or good herring," and I knew that my argu- 

 ments in favor of the beautiful and artistic would not appeal to him in 

 the least, so I went on my way while he continued to lay waste without 

 let or hindrance. 



In this tangle was growing the young shoots of sassafras, so dear to 

 the vireo family, for underneath their leaves dwell countless cater- 

 pillars of the papilio astereas, which in the early stages are beloved of 

 the red-eye, and also there was an abundance of the lesser fly, dear to 

 the heart of the warbler family. Here too I saw my first chestnut- 

 sided warbler, a veritable Joseph in his coat of many colors, yet very 

 neat and dapper, notwithstanding his crazy quilt like combination of the 

 different shades. Here again I saw the dandy of the same family, the 

 black-throated blue, who is really the Beau Brummel of the birds. All 

 of the warblers have a characteristically "pointed" appearance, all their 

 corners being rounded to a V as it were, beak, wing points and tail, 

 furled trim and ship shape, but the black-throated blue's the most so of 

 all. To this same bitter-sweet comes the earliest blue bird bringing 

 on his back our first glimpse of the summer sky. Underneath its 

 shelter were born, bred and bullied by a little brown mother, six tiny 

 representatives of the wren family, who were early cut adrift from the 

 parental nest to become the blacks and tans of feathered society, and 

 by the way, only a short distance from here, a sagacious little house 

 wren allowed the limb in which she had built her nest, to be cut oi¥ 

 and carried to a distant tree, and fastened to one of its branches, with- 

 out disturbing her equanimity or household arrangements in the least, 

 and continued with her business of incubation as unconcernedly as 

 though she were an old stager at spring moving. 



In a great oak above the tangle a pair of crows nested, and were a 

 continuous source of annoyance to three king birds, who must have 

 made life something of a burden to them, for I seldom ever see a crow 

 returning nestward without a kingbird in front of him distracting his 

 attention, while the other two kept up a series of petty attacks in the 



