88 Tue Birps Asout Us. 
CHAPTER IIL 
THE PERCHING BIRDS.—( Continued.) 
OME one somewhere has referred to our country 
as one much be-sparrowed. If this remark 
referred to the nuisance of our city streets, it might 
well be said to be overmuch be-sparrowed; but as 
a class, and placed where Nature purposed them to 
be,—the sparrows, buntings, finches, and grosbeaks 
that go to make up the group known as Fringillide, 
—these birds are a delight, and being harmless—but 
all birds really are—and many of them excellent 
musicians, their places would be sadly missed did 
they forsake our fields and meadows, our gardens 
and door-yards, our woodlands and the sandy shores 
of the resounding sea. Sparrows of one or more 
species everywhere abound, and the sun shines more 
brightly, the flowers are fairer, the grass greener, the 
very air balmier, because of their presence. Nor 
are they fair-weather friends only. There is no mid- 
winter day too arctic for a slate-colored snow-bird, 
or possibly, even as far south as the Middle States, 
a snow-flake or a long-spur; and whatever weather 
rages in circumpolar lands there are sparrows near 
at hand; and in summer at noontide, when the heat 
threatens to scorch the whole living world, I have 
heard the indigo-finch singing by the hour, and not 
seeking the shade of even a single leaf. We are to 
