AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 245 



This sport helped to demoralize the pine squirrel. At the beginning, 

 the little fellow seemed honest enough, but witnessing the general 

 thieving, the squirrel took a hand. He began to steal and hide things 

 belonging to both magpies and crow. This three sided game greatly 

 complicated the war. 



Both the crow and magpies were fond of bright, brilliant things, and 

 to add to the sport, the keeper would often toss into the cage little 

 objects that attracted the bird's attention. This increased the 

 general pilfering and the lively little squirrel became an expert and 

 confirmed thief, though he did not take sides. All this was very funny 

 for the parrot. From her high perch poUy watched the proceedings, 

 sometimes with the gravity of a judge. She never deigned to take 

 part, for that was below her dignity. However, now and then the 

 parrot would chuckle, chatter and scream like a fiend at the four arch- 

 conspiritors, when the game got pretty warm. 



Practical jokes generally end badly, so they did in this cage. War 

 was finally declared between the crow and the magpies growing out 

 of their thieving reprisals. From fun they fell to fighting, and this 

 continued bitterly until the birds lost nearly half their plumage. So 

 the keeper was finally obliged to separate them. The pine squirrel 

 remained with polly. The magpies were placed in a cage with some 

 guinea pigs and white mice, while the old crow was exiled among a 

 flock of wild geese and ducks. 



Among their new associates, the magpies and crow had no incentive 

 to practice dishonesty, while the pine squirrel, having no companion 

 but polly, ceased further pilfering. 



J. Mayne Baltimore. 



A PARASITE 



BY FRANK H. SWEET. 



There are few things in nature which seem utterly worthless without 

 a single redeeming quality to stay our condemnation. There are 

 cowardly animals, and cowardly birds, and cowardly insects; and 

 dangerous and destructive ones, too. But if we watch them closely, 

 there are almost invariably some traits which commend themselves to 

 us, goodness to their own, perhaps, or some tribal or family sense of 

 honor or chivalry. Rarely is anything found in which even a lenient 

 judgment cannot find something to commend — or, at least not to con- 

 demn. 



But the cowbird, the parasite of the feathered world, seems in every 

 way worthy of the unenviable distinction. Of all the American birds 



