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stances can but charm the true lover of nature and captivate 

 anyone in sympathy with rural life and associations. 



Fortunately, this is the case with many, while on the other 

 hand, farmers and farmers' sons have, for over a century past in 

 this country, treated this lovely species with the utmost con- 

 tempt, prejudice, and persecution. Thousands of the birds have 

 sacrificed their gentle lives and fallen to the guns of these har- 

 dened, ignorant, and thoughtless people. Why? Simply because 

 the Catbirds help themselves to a little fruit in season, and the 

 boys are directed to watch the trees and strawberry beds, and 

 shoot all Catbirds on sight. 



This is a particularly disagreeable duty, and calculated to 

 foster the aforesaid prejudice, and pass it down from one genera- 

 tion to another. Add to this the farmer's illiberality and the 

 sense of injury at the loss of half a peck of fruit, and the story is 

 complete. Such feelings are never entertained by the generous 

 and broad-minded among us; for notwithstanding the cat-like 

 mewing of this bird, the plainness of its plumage, its marked fa- 

 miliarity — and familiarity, they say, breeds contempt — people 

 thus endowed possess only interest and admiration for the quaint 

 and modest little Quaker among the host of the feathered tribes. 



Not far removed from the family Troglodytidce is the family 

 Mniotiltidce, containing our great host of American warblers, and 

 in this group has been placed the genus Siurus, containing the 

 Oven-bird and water thrushes. Strictly speaking, we have but 

 one bird in the avifauna of the United States to which the name 

 Oven-bird has been applied, and it likewise has been called the 

 Colden-crowned thrush by some writers, notwithstanding the 

 fact that it lias neither a golden crown nor is it a. thrush. It 

 gained the name of Oven-bird from the form of nest it builds, al- 

 though our Dipper of the West (Cmclus) likewise constructs an 

 oven nest, with a side entrance, as well as Siurus, and the two 

 species are in a way related. 



Those who have paid any attention to the birds of eastern 

 North America are perfectly familiar with our Oven-bird, and it 

 has, too, been taken by collectors in Alaska. It comes to us just 

 so soon as spring has thoroughly opened, and it is usually heard 

 a few times before one catches sight of it. As Wilson has said, 

 " It has no song, but a shrill, energetic twitter, formed by the 

 rapid reiteration of two notes, peche, peche, peche, for a quarter 

 of a minute at a time." 



