106 FLORIDA 



until this winter. About Miami it is decidedly 

 common, though the green females show them- 

 selves ten times as often as the red, blue, and 

 yeUow-green males. What a superbly dressed 

 creature the masculine nonpareil is ! And he 

 carries himself as if he knew it. " Dear me," he 

 seems always to be saying ; " this Joseph's coat 

 of mine makes me so conspicuous! Some day 

 it will be my undoing." My readers will most 

 likely have seen the gorgeous little creature in 

 cages (I found one many years ago in the Bos- 

 ton Public Garden, I remember), though the 

 chances are that they have never seen him in 

 anything like his brightest and liveliest feather. 

 A bird, like a butterfly, was bom to be looked 

 at out of doors with the sunlight on him. So far 

 I have heard no note from the nonpareil except 

 his rather soft chip. The birds frequent weedy 

 tangles in open grounds, showing special fondness 

 for patches of the white bur-marigold, and seem 

 to be well scattered over the country. 



Day after day I walk down through the ham- 

 mock (I have spoken of it before, and most 

 likely shall do so again) between Miami and 

 Cocoanut Grove. Indeed, so constant are my 

 peregrinations thither that I begin to find my 

 innocent self treated as a kind of mysterious 

 personage — one of the " features " of the place, 



