CH, I.] OF WHITE-THROAT. 155 
season, raising» himself on the wing and gracefully 
subsiding again, as if his ordinary flight was too 
low and commonplace for his buoyant spirits. 
But though the effect of the breeding-season 
in counteracting the natural wildness of the bird 
is peculiarly exemplified in the case of the Wood- 
pigeon, it is by no means confined to that species. 
Many appear to be more or less sensible of its 
genial influence. 
I remember finding, when a boy, the nest of a 
White-throat, which she had constructed in the 
stem of a tall hemlock. Whilst engaged in the 
work of incubation, she appeared to be perfectly 
devoid of fear, and would not only permit my 
sister and myself to stroke her on her nest, but 
would actually take food from our hands, thus 
proving that her tameness was not merely the 
result of that mysterious o7ropyn—that love for 
her young, which in the female seems to annihilate 
all sense of fear, but that, apart from it, she had 
lost that dread of man by which she would at 
other times have been more or less influenced. 
The following remarkable anecdote may not 
be considered out of place here, although it is not 
improbable that in this instance the bird was actu- 
ated simply by orépyn. 
