1881.] The Eastern Snow-Bird. 525 
However interesting to the philosopher a new species may be, 
it is “caviare to the general.” If you would please the million 
show up your “white black-bird.” Last summer it was given 
out that a white robin was in town, and forthwith every avicide 
from sixteen to forty-five years old, with gun in hand, inspected 
every shade tree in the village. The bird-killers were foiled. 
The robin had been and gone. And it was similar with the few 
who got the word of another arrival one bitter day in this cold 
February, Just before the gas was lighted “a snow-white snow- 
bird” had flown into the ticket office of our village depot. It 
was an albino. The poor bewildered thing sailed round the 
room close to the ceiling, much as a swallow would do; and 
what with the glare of the lights, and the heat, and the senseless 
efforts made to capture it by throwing hats, it hada really hard time. 
The door being opened, it darted out, and happily escaped; more 
fortunate than the one seen by Mr. Alcott in Connecticut in 1870. 
Has there not been within the memory of man, a marked 
change in the migration habits of Junco hyemalis? They have 
their stragglers and “ tender-foots,” who do not go so far north to 
breed as do the others. Still. the laggers seem capable of a 
topical compromise, nesting higher in the Southern mountains, 
while their tardier kindred, who venture farther north, nest lower 
down on the mountain sides. Was there not a time when this 
nesting southward of our eastern snow-bird was, at most, very 
€xceptional ? I see these birds so happy and in such good heart 
in the severest winter day, that I infer an Arctic constitution in 
the well-to-do’s of the tribe. Were they not once like the snow- 
bunting, Plectrophanes nivalis, which nests as high as Labrador, 
but which, it seems, has twice been found nesting in the Northern 
United States, May one who is not even the son of a prophet 
venture a prediction for the bird men of the future, that the snow- 
bunting will be found working southward after the example of 
its cousin the snow-bird. 
I do not remember the name of the bard, and fear lest I should 
Sarble his classic lines, yet the very best I can do is to quote 
his verse in an ad sensum way ; 
y ** Noah of old, three children had, 
Or sons, I should say, rather; 
Shem, Ham and Japhet, called Ly dad— 
Now, who was Japhet’s father ? 
~The above it appeared was too much for Hodge; he could 
Scratch his ear, but could not answer. Perhaps science has its 
