258 PERCHERS AND SINGERS 
so utterly barbarous and mean as to engage in, or permit, the 
killing of our song-birds in order that they be used either as 
food for biped pigs, or to adorn (?) the cheap millinery of 
servant-girls? Never! 
Let it not be thought, however, that the Order Passeres 
has not a good share of birds of beautiful plumage. In our 
own fields and forests, behold the waxwing, the oriole, the 
cardinal, the tanager, the grosbeak, the magpie, the jay and 
the bobolink. The tropics contain the wonderful birds of 
paradise, and a bewildering array of hummingbirds, co- 
tingas, finches, ground thrushes and many others. 
If the temperate zone lacks anything in perching birds of 
brilliant plumage, that lack is more than made up by the 
singing birds. With all its wealth of bird life, brilliant and 
plain, the tropics are generally silent, and a joyous or musical 
bird song is rarely heard. Of the bird cries that one occasion- 
ally hears, the majority are harsh and unpleasant squawks. 
The tropical day has neither robin nor mockingbird, the 
night no whippoorwill. True, there is the awful “‘brain- 
fever” bird of the Indian night, but it is neither musical nor 
joyous. One may spend months in the tropics, both of America 
and of the Far East, and in all that time hear less of real bird 
song than can be heard on many an American farm in one 
day. 
As might be expected in a large Order of birds, the food 
habits of the perchers cover a wide variety of foods. The 
great majority prefer to live upon insects, and the young of all 
species are absolutely dependent upon soft-bodied insects, 
larvae and earthworms. Many birds are really limited to 
