Ill 



more species, widely various, found mainly in the warmer parts of America. Some 

 are slender-billed and warVler-like ; others have stout conical bills and stand close 

 to finches. 



Our single genus has a stout sparrow-like bill, notched at the tip and toothed 

 near the middle of the upper mandible. They are frugivorous and insectivorous, 

 and hence migratory in the United States. They live in woods, lay four or five 

 dark, speckled eggs, nest in trees and are fair songsters. The seasonal and sexual 

 differences in color are extreme. Dr. Coues makes them the text for a brief but 

 vigorous onslaught upon the present custom of adorning wearing apparel with 

 natural history collections, so pointed that I introduce it here: "These birds are 

 famed for the beauty and variety of their coloration, being among those most fre- 

 quently exhibited in the show-cases of the bird-stuffers and milliners, as well as on 

 the head-wear of fashionable ladies, who have degenerated iato walking advertise- 

 ments of wretched taxidermy, in their rage for barbaric ornamentation of their 

 persons. The style used to be to wear plumes selected for their beauty of colora- 

 tion or their gracefulness of shape, but the itch of savagery has broken out with 

 aggravated symptoms, to be satisfied with nothing short of an ornithological 

 museum. I once counted the feathers of no less than fifteen different kinds of 

 birds on the dress of an Indian squaw; but then her alleged husband had one 

 necklace of grizzly bear's claws, and another of human finger-tips ; and circum- 

 stances alter cases, you know. It seemed to me less singular than the case of 

 another woman whom I examined with some care shortly afterward, on whose 

 bosom rested a gilt-tipped tiger's claw, from whose ears depended two claws of 

 the same animal, in whose hair nestled the greater part of the external anatomy of 

 the bird known as the shitepoke, and to whose loins a live poodle dog was tied by 

 a long blue string. Such a toilet, I think, would be far more effective with the 

 rouge and lily-white in streaks, instead of layers, and a fish-bone through the nose. 

 It is not that the tanagers are not highly ornamental, but that they are sometimes 

 out of place." 



PYRONGA. Vieillot. Fire Tanagers. 



63. P. RUBRA. (L. Vieillot.} Scarlet Tanager. Male brilliant scarlet wings; 

 and tail black ; female clear green, clear greenish yellow below ; L. 73^ ; W. 

 4; T. 3. A common spring and fall migrant; a few remain to breed. A well 

 known bird, once seen never forgotten. The tanager flies through the green foliage 

 as though it would ignite the leaves, says Thoreau. " I hold this bird," says Dr. 

 Coues, " in particular, almost superstitious recollection, as being the very first of 

 all the feathered tribe to stir within me those emotions that have never ceased to 

 stimulate and gratify my love for birds. More years have passed than I care to 

 remember since a little child was strolling through an orchard one bright morning 

 in June, filled with mute wonder at beauties felt, but neither questioned nor under- 

 stood. A shout from an older companion, ' There goes a scarlet tanager !' and the 

 child was straining eager, wistful eyes after something that had flashed upon his 

 senses for a moment as if from another world, it seemed so bright, so beautiful, so 

 strange. 'What is a scarlet tanager?' mused the child, whose consciousness had 

 •flown with the wonderful apparition on wings of ecstacy ; but the bees hummed on, 

 the scent of flowers floated by, the sunbeam passed across the greensward, and 

 there was no reply, nothing but the echo of a mute appeal to natuje, stirring the 

 very depths with an inward thrill. That night the vision came again in dreamland, 

 where the strangest things are truest and known the best ; the child was startled 



