174 LITEKA.EY VALUES 



woodpecker enter, late in the day, the cavities in de- 

 caying limbs of trees. I have seen the oriole dis- 

 pose of herself for the night on the end of a maple 

 branch vphere her " pendent bed and procreant 

 cradle " was begun a few days later. In walking 

 through the summer fields in the twilight, the ves- 

 per sparrow or the song sparrow will often start up 

 from almost beneath one's feet. It is said that the 

 snow-bunting will plunge beneath the snow and 

 pass the night there. The ruifled grouse often does 

 this, but the swallows seem to be an exception to 

 this rule. I have seen a vast cloud of swifts take 

 up their lodging for the night in a tall, unused 

 chimney ; but the barn swallows and the cliff and the 

 white-bellied swallows, at least after the young have 

 flown, appear to pass the night in the vicinity of 

 streams. White noticed also — and here the true 

 observer again crops out — that the fieldfare, a kind 

 of thrush, though a tree-builder, always appears to 

 pass the night on the ground. " The larkers, in 

 dragging their nets by night, frequently catch them 

 in the wheat stubbles." He learned, as every ob- 

 server sooner or later learns, to be careful of sweep- 

 ing statements, — that the truth of nature is not al- 

 ways caught by the biggest generalizations. After 

 speaking of the birds that dust themselves, earth 

 their plumage — pulveratrices, as he calls them — 

 he says, " As far as I can observe, many birds that 

 dust themselves never wash, and I once thought that 

 those birds that wash themselves would never dust ; 

 but here I find myself mistaken," and he instances the 



