THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 77 



ing for the night in a very dim corner of our bedroom ; on the first 

 glimpse of dawn the said fly made an impetuous dart towards the 

 window, and struck against one of the window panes with a bang 

 that sounded hke the impact of a hail pellet. Similarly an inexper- 

 ienced shrike, noticing a pair of caged canaries which had been 

 placed on a window ledge inside a front room, made a lunge at what 

 may have seemed an easy capture,but was knocked unconscious, if 

 not silly. The shrike was picked up but never raUied, but was sent 

 to a taxidermist. 



A ruffed grouse, whose history we wot of, once, when hotly 

 chased by a hawk, darted at the window of the house of one of our 

 acquaintances, broke the glass and gained ingress to the sheltering 

 room, and was soon let out again through the hastily opened door, 

 as there seemed reason to fear that the big bird would'nt emerge at 

 the same aperture that had afforded an entrance. 



A red squirrel that had gained entrance to the room of a dwell- 

 ing, seemed to become panic stricken and made such a number of 

 absurd attempts to burglarize the window glass, that several persons 

 united in the work of eviction through a widely open door. 



The instances of birds colliding in their headlong flight with 

 telegraph wires are so common as no longer to excite surprise or 

 comment. Dead birds which have ended their career in this fashion 

 are very frequently picked up by the section men about here. The 

 birds when seeking their food in the grass or herbage near the rail- 

 way track are panic stricken by the sudden whistle of an onrushing 

 train, and dart away at hap-hazard speed often in ill-guided bewilder- 

 ment. 



The railway section men also say that they recently picked up 

 the mutilated remains of a full grown racoon that had loitered on 

 the track the night previous ; the quadruped seemed to have been 

 dazed by the glare of the seemingly unmoving headHghtand remained 

 undecided just one moment too long. 



My brother James, who was employed for a large portion of his 

 life in pioneer-like work in the forests, used to relate several gro- 

 tesque traits, showing the impetuous force in bird-flight, as, for 

 instance, once noticing the rapid approach of a wood thrush, to 

 whose song he had for a short time been listening (he was standing 

 at the time behind a large tree), suddenly jerked out his spread hand 



