Mind tn Animals. 401 
much as one can do to protect his eyes from the lightning- 
like attacks of these birds, so swiftly and so unerringly do 
they direct their blows at these points. 
So great is the affection and solicitude of the red-eyed 
vireo for her young, that she will scarcely leave the nest 
when the hand is stretched out a few inches over the mouth 
of the structure. And then when she does leave, it is not 
in a hurried, precipitate manner, but with a quiet, deliberate 
movement that excites one’s admiration and makes one 
vow never to abuse such simple, childlike confidence. I 
have even placed my hand upon the sitting-bird without 
disturbing the current of her brooding thoughts, or the 
peaceful serenity of her soul. A rough dash at the nest 
tends to frighten her away zzstanter, but when the hand is 
reached out to it slowly and silently the bird seems to act as 
though it had nothing to fear, and remains calm and self- 
possessed. 
Who is not familiar with the proverbial skill of the Caro- 
lina dove in feigning lameness when her nest is being 
approached? Without a cry, and with scarcely a rustle of her 
feathers, she slips out of her nest upon the ground, and by a 
series of manceuvres, as if desperately wounded, grovels 
along on her belly in the dust till she has led her enemy a 
long journey from the site of the nest, when she will take 
to wing and and fly away into a coppice or a clump of brush- 
wood. 
That birds should manifest a love for the young which 
they hatch has always seemed a strange problem to me. I 
can see how that, in the case of a mammal, the mother 
should feel a love for the creature who is absolutely a part 
of herself—whose very life-blood is drawn from her veins. 
But this is not necessarily the case with birds. If, as often 
happens with poultry, the eggs of several hens are placed 
under one bird for hatching, the hen that hatches them 
knows no difference between the chickens that come from 
her own eggs and those which proceed from eggs laid by 
