CHAPTER III. 
THE SHRIKE OR BUTCHER BIRD. 
It is wortli while to say something more in detail about 
this same butcher bird before we dismiss him. The people 
who always have a reason for a name, have very properly 
called the little wretch butcher, for butcher he is in the very 
worst sense of the term ! 
I specially wish to attract attention to some curious coin- 
cidences between the apparent place of this bird on the scale 
of animal life, and — that last of all creatures with which it 
would seem possible at first view to institute a comparison 
at all — I mean the humming bird. Now do not be startled 
— but hear what I have to say ! The humming bird is known 
as the apparent link between insects and birds. There is a 
moth so closely resembling it, which is found all the way 
South from Pennsylvania — that it requires an acute observer 
to distinguish one from the other at the distance of a few 
feet when they are feeding from the flowers, which they do 
in the same way. 
'Now the shrike is quite as evidently the connecting link 
between the raptores or hawks, and song-birds, as the hum- 
ming bird is the link between the song-birds and insects ! 
The shrike resembles the hawk in its thirst for carnage and 
manner of stooping upon its prey, except that, as it has not 
strong claws like the hawk, it strikes with its strong beak. 
It resembles the mocking bird so closely in plumage, that 
older naturalists than I was at sixteen, have frequently con- 
