232 NATURAL HISTORY READ BR. 



cupation, when the blow was renewed, and she soon saw 

 her assailant perched on a limb just overhead, threatening 

 to renew the contest. Near by was a female bird, brood- 

 ing over a nest of young, and angrily watching the intru- 

 der. 



9. Soon after they had emigrated to my evergreens, I 

 once noticed one of the birds engaged in tearing open a 

 nest of the bag-worm on an apple-tree. Thinking the act 

 was a mere destructive impulse, I was about walking 

 away, when the bird, with its bill apparently tilled with 

 several living and contorting larvae, changed its position to 

 a tree close by where I was standing. After several nerv- 

 ous and angry bows of the head and flirts of the wings, it 

 eyed me sternly, and seemed to say, " You are incpiisitive 

 and meddling with that which is none of your business. 

 We wish to be let alone." Its next removal was to an ad- 

 jacent black-spruce-tree, where I could plainly see it dis- 

 tributing the captive bag-worms to sundry open and up- 

 lifted mouths. 



10. From this hint I was led closely to watch the fur- 

 ther proceedings of the community. Before the young 

 birds had passed from the care of the parents, most of the 

 worms' nests had been broken into, many were torn into 

 threads, and the number of occupants evidently diminished. 

 Two or three years afterward not a worm was to be seen in 

 that neighborhood, and more recently I have searched for 

 it in vain, in order to rear some cabinet specimens of the 

 moth. In several adjacent townships it is said to be still 

 common. 



11. Early in the month of April, two years since, my 

 attention was awakened by a commotion among the birds 

 in my evergreens. It involved not only jays and crow- 

 blackbirds, but robins and bluebirds. Combatants seemed 

 to have gathered from the whole country around. At 

 times half a dozen of these several species would engage in 



