ORCHARD ORIOLE. 



Icterus spurius Bonaparte. 



Plate XXX. Fig. 4. 



May, thou month of rosy beauty. 

 Month when pleasure is a duty; 

 Month of maids that milk the kine, 

 Bosom rich, and health divine; 

 Month of bees and month of flowers, 

 Month of blossom-laden bowers. 

 Month of little hands with daisies. 

 Lovers' love, and poets' praises; 

 O thou merry month complete, 

 - May, thy very name is sweet ! 

 May was Maid in olden times, 

 And is still in Scottish rhymes — 

 May's the month that's laughing now. 



Leigh Humt. 



"HILE in the northern parts of our great country May is an extremely change- 

 able month, a month of sunshine and cold spells, a month of hilarity and 

 sufferings for our delicate insectivorous birds, in southern Missouri, in Arkansas and 

 Texas it is the most exhilerating and beautiful time of the year. In the South the first 

 days of May see the queen of our American forest, the grand evergreen magnolia, in 

 full bloom. What a charm to the eye is this glorious tree, and how delicious is the 

 fragrance of its incomparably beautiful flowers ! Near it stands the noble, broad, ever- 

 green live oak, densely covered with festoons of gray Spanish moss. In the gardens the 

 wealth of roses in ftiU bloom is almost overwhelming. Arbors are covered with Banksia 

 roses, Japan honey-suckles, and Carolina jasmine, and wistarias climb high up on the 

 mulberry trees, covering them with a sheet of fragrant blue flower trusses. Dense ever- 

 green hedges of Cherokee roses often line the roads for miles. The gardenias or Cape 

 jasmines, frequently eight to ten feet in height and diameter, have opened their waxy- 

 white, deliciously scented blossoms among the abundant deep glossy green foliage. 

 The crinums and the amaryllis- {Hippeastrutn Jobnsonii) are flowering in gorgeous 

 masses, vieing in beauty with the lilies of the northern gardens. Woodlands and orna- 

 mental plantations, orchard hedges and swampy thickets are replete with bird-life. 

 Indeed, there is scarcely a moment that we do not see or hear birds in this "month of 

 rosy beauty." In south-western Missouri this time of the year is distinguished by a 

 very salubrious, pure, and mild air, and, though we do not find here the semi-tropical 

 plants alluded to above, the grassy prairies are covered with countless numbers of wild 

 flowers, and the woodlands and dells are exceedingly rich in flowering shrubs and trees. 

 How desolate and dreary would these gardens, woodlands, and prairies be without the 

 poetry and life imbued to them by frolicking and singing birds ! 



In the southern parts of our country bird-life is at its best in the "poets' month 

 of May," when "every rose-bush has a nest and every thorn a flower." At this time 

 the most delicate and beautiful songsters arrive from their winter-quarters among a 

 wealth of foliage and blossoms, sunshine and salubrious air. Many of the earlier 



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