1 52 BY- WA YS AND BIRD-NO TES. 



used to be, fields of wheat and corn lay green 

 and smooth almost to the horizon's rim. What 

 a loss the absent birds were felt to be ! In 

 fact, when, after much plaintive sauntering 

 over the altered grounds, I chanced to hear a 

 lonely purple finch twittering in a hedge of 

 bois d'arc, I felt a thrill of delight which was 

 like an electric message from my childhood's 

 days. In the streets of the village which had 

 shrunken, as if in some mysterious proportion 

 to the widening of the surrounding plains of 

 agricultural thrift, foraged a well-fed flock of 

 detestable English sparrows. This, I thought, 

 is advanced enlightenment — a covered ditch 

 for a brook, a prim hedge in lieu of a wild 

 plum thicket, an orchard displacing an odor- 

 ous grove of wild crab-apple and these pests 

 of sparrows usurping the homes of the cardi- 

 nal-bird and the thrushes ! 



From almost any little country town, even 

 in the West, one must now, as a rule, make a 

 long flight into the most neglected nooks of 

 the rural neighborhoods, before one can find 

 the haunts of the more interesting songsters. 

 The elect few of the feathered choir, like the 

 choice spirits of the outer circle of young 

 poets, are fond of utter, limitless freedom ; 

 they do not relish the fragrance, however 

 sweet, of over-cultured gardens and bowers. 

 True enough, the blue-bird warbles very con- 

 tentedly on the best kept fence-row as he 

 watches the ploughman turn up the tid-bits from 

 the furrow ; and it is an almost savage ten- 

 derness that quavers from his throat as he 

 pounces upon the dislodged worm, his wings 

 gleaming like some precious, doubly purified 



