Song Birds and Water Fowl 



Mr. Elliott Coues expresses it, "set a stigma 

 upon the family name. " It is an instance, not 

 infrequent, where one may suffer for the sins of 

 his contemporaneous relatives quite as much as 

 for the sins of his ancestors. Undoubtedly, a 

 bad physical odor spreads no faster than a good 

 one j the scent of the skunk cabbage radiates 

 no more rapidly than that of the rose. But, in 

 the moral world, it sometimes seems as if the 

 law of dispersion were founded on variable 

 dynamics, that the odor of an evil deed could 

 diffuse itself more quickly than a virtuous per- 

 fume. Scandal rides post-haste, and a breath 

 of suspicion has more energy of radiation than 

 a perfect gale of compliment. Certainly, in the 

 feathered tribe, the merits of the European 

 species do not seem to reach this country with 

 the facility of their occasional mal-odorous traits. 

 In the matter of architecture, too, while our 

 own cuckoos are as yet very indifferent build- 

 ers, they are distinctly in advance of the Eu- 

 ropean varieties, which simply build no nest 

 at all, but habitually leave their eggs in the 

 nests of other species. Their impulses, in this 

 country, are plainly for higher things; and if 

 a being is to be judged not so much by what 

 he is as by what he aims to be, our sympathies 



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