THE CITY OF THE BIRDS. 6$ 



natured, sweet-songed, contented ways of life, are 

 sure to be imposed upon by this shameless inter- 

 loper. It would be interesting to know how she 

 had found this half-concealed nest ; whether she 

 had watched, with her large eyes, from a distance, 

 the progress of building and the deposition of a 

 certain number of eggs before she ventured near, 

 or had come upon it by accident. 



How curious is this aberrant habit of the cow- 

 bird ! Perhaps the 'ancestors of these blackbird 

 tramps were, as Mr. Darwin suggests of the cuck- 

 oos of Europe, once legitimate builders, but in the 

 course of time they found out by occasionally 

 laying eggs in the homes of other species, that 

 they "profited by it, through being able to migrate 

 earlier, or some other cause"; the young thus 

 reared would be apt to follow by inheritance the 

 habits of their mother, till at last these birds have 

 lost the art of nest-building altogether, and shifted 

 the labor of rearing their young on distant, well- 

 disposed relations. 



For a week all went well with my sitting bird, 

 but one morning, when I had determined to visit 

 her ledge and relieve it of the alien egg before it 

 should become a big gormandizer, thus starving 

 out the rightful owjiers, I was grieved by seeing 

 the mourning weeds and cypress about the door, 

 and a deserted nest. Some keen-scented foot-pad 

 squirrel or weasel, a crow or jay highwayman, had 



