218 THE BIRD 
country, made their campaign so much the more successfully, because 
each waged war in its own manner. The black, the gray, and the 
egg-layer (such were their military titles), marched together in close 
array, and recoiled not a step; the dreamer or philosopher preferred 
skirmishing by himself (chowanner), and accomplished much more 
work. A superb black cat, the companion of their solitude, studied 
daily the track of the field mouse and the lizard, hunted the wasp, 
devoured the Spanish fly, always at some distance in advance of 
the respectful hens, 
One word more in reference to them, and one regret. Our business 
being finished, we prepared for our departure. But what would become 
of them? Given to a friend, they would assuredly be eaten. We 
deliberated long. Then, coming to a vigorous decision, according to 
the ancient creed of savage tribes, who believed that it was sweetest 
to die by the hands of those we love, and thought that by eating 
their heroes they themselves became heroic, we made of them, not 
without lamentation, a funereal banquet. 
It is a truly grand spectacle to see descend—one might almost say 
from heaven —against this frightful swarming of the universal 
monster-birth which awakens in the spring, hissing, whirring, croak- 
ing, buzzing, in its huge hunger, the universal saviour, in a hundred 
