BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 101 
My faith in his ability to defend himself against dogs became 
so strong that upon the application of several parties with 
vicious canines, to show what their special dog could do, I 
challenged any and all, one at a time, to attack him. One of 
the largest in the city was allowed to open the tournament in 
the presence of many witnesses. Sandie was taken out onto 
the lawn in front of my home, and after various comical 
familiarities in the way of eating unheard of things offered 
him, posed quietly on one foot, and having closed his eyes as 
an expressive hint that he was satisfied for the time to suspend 
performances, when we all withdrew a little distance, and a 
bouncing dog—a cross between a mastiff and Newfoundland— 
was shown the stilted biped, and stayed not a moment in his 
‘going for him.” Sandie, whose whole demeanor was under 
the closest notice, partially opened his windward eye, but 
remained standing upon the single foot, without in the 
slightest changing his position, his doubly curved neck, head 
and bill, drawn well back upon his body, till the onrushing 
dog was within a half of a yard of him, when his closed, 
acutely pointed bill and head shot out like an arrow from a 
bow, and the ferocious canine doubled up into the shape of a 
letter ‘‘C,” and peeling for home, howling as if in the agonies 
of an attack of colic, left the sponge high in air, never again 
to challenge a Sandhill Crane to combat. Never afterwards 
would any one who witnessed the short ‘‘mill” permit his dog 
to give or accept a challenge from Sandie. Sometime after 
this I presented him to the Central Park Museum, in New York 
City, where it was my great privilege to see him after a number 
of years, and again several years later, on my way to Europe 
in 1882, found him without any indications of increasing age 
or infirmities, and Mr. Conklin, the manager who received him 
from me originally, assured me that Sandie was all right, and 
appeared to greatly enjoy the considerable numbers of his 
species associated with him in that paradise of bird incar- 
ceration. 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 
Bill compressed; lower mandible not as deep towards the 
tip as the upper; gonys nearly straight, in the same line with 
the basal portion of the bill; commissure decidedly curving 
from beyond the middle to the tip, where it is even, not 
erenated; color bluish-gray; primaries and spurious quills 
dark plumbeous-brown; the shafts white; cheeks and chin 
whitish; entire top of head bare of feathers, warty and granu- 
