86 THE CITY OF THE BIRDS. 



he is inclined to be silent whenever his nest 

 is approached, and one can not see a hide or 

 feather of him. Perhaps the next day he takes it 

 in his head to be talkative and tells you in plain 

 English, his name, over and over again, so many 

 times that the monotonous refrain becomes weari- 

 some and dull. Again he is over confident. He 

 assumes a jaunty, free and easy air, as though the 

 object of his affections was not within a hundred 

 yards of him. He perches on the limb of a 

 neighboring tree, in full view, and reels off from 

 his throat quite a long string of notes, as if he had 

 been taking lessons of the grosbeak. It is am us 

 ing to hear him, he tries so hard to oversing him- 

 self, to strain a point and pass beyond the limits 

 of the piece of music which Nature had composed 

 for him. Then, as if all his celestial thoughts had 

 suddenly departed, he descends to the ground in a 

 kind of serrated, angular flight, as though tripping 

 down an aerial stairway, to engage in the more 

 earthly pursuit of worms and bugs. 



On the fourteenth day after the discovery of 

 the nest, there were young in it. How curi- 

 ous is this law of incubation ! That a certain 

 degree of heat on the egg, without any apparent 

 development of the young, for a special duration 

 of time, should be so efficacious in calling forth 

 life, seems indeed like a miracle. A few hours 

 ago these twisting, gaping, weak-necked, short- 



