50 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-MOTES. 



Its architectural powers are of the poorest. 

 No other of our arboreal birds, not even the 

 common dove, builds so crazy and insecure a 

 home. But I am getting into rather deep or- 

 nithological mire. It is so easy to find room 

 for digression when one gets out-of-doors ! 

 Everything is suggestive.. To the vision of a 

 careful observer and student each object in na- 

 ture has an interrogation-point beside it. With 

 pencil and note-book let us catalogue these 

 suggestions and interrogations, and lay them 

 aside for future use. When, some day, we 

 come to look them over we shall be surprised 

 how perfectly — like dried roots and plants — 

 they have kept their out-door fragrance and 

 taste. 



II. 



In studying the birds most usually met with 

 on out-door excursions I have found it very in- 

 teresting to make notes of certain striking evi- 

 dences of a special harmonic relation between 

 their movements, colors, and attitudes, and 

 the peculiarities of their natural surroundings. 



Ornithologists have over and over again 

 rung the changes on the ease with which the 

 quail, the grouse, and the hare make them- 

 selves next to invisible to the human eye, and 

 to the piercing vision of birds off prey as well ; 

 but there are many curious details connected 

 with this subject of a natural harmony of mo- 

 tion and color, regarding birds and their envi- 

 ronments, which I have never seen in print. 

 Of course, since the quail, the hare, and the 

 grouse have been for so long the objects of 

 desire of sportsmen, pot-hunters, and epicures, 



