it is too large and heavy. She can't afford to abandon the nest she has made with so much care: it would take too much time to provide another one. So, instead, she goes to work and builds up the walls of her nest a little higher, and then covers over the egg so full of mischief with a thick matting of fresh materials. Now she has it fast. It can't hatch out, to be the death of her own darlings when they appear. She may now bring up her own family in peace and safety.

Sometimes the Blackbird finds the poor mother Yellow-Bird absent from her nest after she has laid some of her eggs, and the vagabond adds to them one of her own. What is poor Blue-eyes to do now? She seems to know that it will be of no use to go on and hatch out both. The intruder will be sure to be the death of her children. The only sure way is to part with them all then, and at once; and so the walls of the nest are raised higher, and Cowbird's egg and all are buried up, so that none can hatch; and a second time she lays her eggs, and this time she takes precious good care no vagabond Blackbird can have another chance to disturb them.

Once, when a Yellow-Bird had just completed its pretty nest in a barberrybush in our garden in Roxbury, an impudent Cow Blackbird one morning left an egg in it. Yellow-Bird, however, soon had it all built over, covered up, and a nest made as good as new. But no sooner was this finished than along comes another Blackbird; and, finding Mistress Blue-eyes off her guard, she, too, deposits a great brown egg. What is to be done now? The nest is already two stories high! No matter: little Blue-eyes is not so easily discouraged. Besides, materials are plenty, and egg number two is soon covered up by story number three; and now, at last, her own brood may be hatched out in safety. This nest, after she had done with it, we took in to the distinguished naturalist, Mr. Audubon, then staying in Boston; and in his work on the Birds of America you may read how much the sagacity and perseverance of our birds pleased and surprised him.

What do our readers call this wonderful intelligence, on the part of these little birds, by which they avoid the ungrateful task of rearing a bird that would repay their kindness with base ingratitude? Is it not more like reason than instinct? No other birds seem to display the like intelligence. The Yellow-Birds invariably manifest it, and never suffer themselves to be thus imposed upon.

Let me tell you one more anecdote of these birds, — not of my own observation, but told me by a friend. A pair of Yellow-Birds built a nest in a low bush near Calais, in Maine. After raising one brood, they did what they rarely do,-repaired the old nest and used it again. The mother had laid in it her eggs and was sitting on them, when a storm partly overturned the nest. They abandoned it, built another in the same bush, and laid some more eggs in that. The gentleman on whose grounds the nests were restored the first nest to an upright position, and securely fastened it. The father-bird came back to it, and sat upon the eggs and hatched them out, while the motherbird continued on the second nest. Each hatched out, and each fed and brought up its own separate family.

As our young readers may have already inferred from what we have told them, the summer Yellow-Birds are tender, devoted, and watchful parents. They love even the empty nest before their family occupy it, and keep closely to it until it has received its treasures. Then they cling still more closely to both; and, when any one approaches too near, or examines its contents, both birds exhibit a very great uneasiness, — approaching the intruder in a fearless manner, flying about his head and uttering pitiful cries to evince their great distress. Sometimes, before their nest is discovered, they will pretend to be lame, and flutter along the ground, to draw, by this artifice, the intruder aside from the spot they wish him to avoid.

The song of the Yellow-Bird, though not loud, powerful, or varied, is very sweet and pleasant, and is heard from the earliest dawn to evening twilight on the long days of summer. Usually there are several pairs in the same garden, and the male birds respond one to the other. Later, when family cares press upon them, and hungry mouths claim their watchful care, their songs are less frequent, and before September they cease entirely.

Before concluding our sketch of this attractive little summer visitor, it may be interesting to our young readers to know that there are, on the continent of America, a number of Yellow Warblers so very closely resembling our birds that no one but a skilful naturalist can tell them apart, and yet they are all different. Indeed, even the naturalists, until very recently, supposed they were the same with our North American Yellow-Bird. They are all found in South America, or in the West Indies, except our bird; and, what is very singular, they are each found in a different place. Professor Baird calls them the group of the "Golden Warblers." One is found in Cuba, and nowhere else, another in Jamaica, a third in St. Croix, a fourth in New Granada, and so on. This is a very singular and unusual freak of nature; for it is very rare to find so many different species of birds so closely resembling each other, yet all specifically distinct.

T. M. B.

ON

THE SQUIRRELS THAT LIVE IN A HOUSE.

NCE upon a time a gentleman went out into a great forest, and cut away the trees, and built there a very nice little cottage. It was set very low on the ground, and had very large bow-windows, and so much of it was glass that one could look through it on every side and see what was going on in the forest. You could see the shadows of the fern-leaves, as they flickered and wavered over the ground, and the scarlet partridge-berry and wintergreen plums that matted round the roots of the trees, and the bright spots of sunshine that fell through their branches and went dancing about among the bushes and leaves at their roots. You could see the little chipping sparrows and thrushes and robins and bluebirds building their nests

here and there among the branches, and watch them from day to day as they laid their eggs and hatched their young. You could also see red squirrels, and gray squirrels, and little striped chip-squirrels, darting and springing about, here and there and everywhere, running races with each other from bough to bough, and chattering at each other in the gayest possible manner. You may be sure that such a strange thing as a great mortal house for human beings to live in did not come into this wild wood without making quite a stir and excitement among the inhabitants that lived there before. All the time it was building, there was the greatest possible commotion in the breasts of all the older population; and there was n't even a black ant, or a cricket, that did not have his own opinion about it, and did not tell the other ants and crickets just what he thought the world was coming to in consequence.

Old Mrs. Rabbit declared that the hammering and pounding made her nervous, and gave her most melancholy forebodings of evil times. "Depend upon it, children," she said to her long-eared family, "no good will come to us from this establishment. Where man is, there comes always trouble for us poor rabbits."

The old chestnut-tree, that grew on the edge of the woodland ravine, drew a great sigh which shook all his leaves, and expressed it as his conviction that no good would ever come of it, a conviction that at once struck to the heart of every chestnut-burr. The squirrels talked together of the dreadful state of things that would ensue. "Why!" said old Father Gray, "it's evident that Nature made the nuts for us; but one of these great human creatures will carry off and gormandize upon what would keep a hundred poor families of squirrels in comfort." Old Ground-mole said it did not require very sharp eyes to see into the future, and it would just end in bringing down the price of real estate in the whole vicinity, so that every decentminded and respectable quadruped would be obliged to move away; — for his part, he was ready to sell out for anything he could get. The bluebirds and bobolinks, it is true, took more cheerful views of matters; but then, as old Mrs. Ground-mole observed, they were a flighty set, -half their time careering and dissipating in the Southern States, and could not be expected to have that patriotic attachment to their native soil that those had who had grubbed in it from their earliest days.

"This race of man," said the old chestnut-tree, "is never ceasing in its restless warfare on Nature. In our forest solitudes, hitherto, how peacefully, how quietly, how regularly, has everything gone on! Not a flower has missed its appointed time of blossoming, or failed to perfect its fruit. No matter how hard has been the winter, how loud the winds have roared, and how high the snow-banks have been piled, all has come right again in spring. Not the least root has lost itself under the snows, so as not to be ready with its fresh leaves and blossoms when the sun returns to melt the frosty chains of winter. We have storms sometimes that threaten to shake everything to pieces, the thunder roars, the lightning flashes, and the winds howl and beat; but, when all is past, everything comes out better and

-

-

brighter than before, not a bird is killed, not the frailest flower destroyed. But man comes, and in one day he will make a desolation that centuries cannot repair. Ignorant boor that he is, and all incapable of appreciating the glorious works of Nature, it seems to be his glory to be able to destroy in a few hours what it was the work of ages to produce. The noble oak, that has been cut away to build this contemptible human dwelling, had a life older and wiser than that of any man in this country. That tree has seen generations of men come and go. It was a fresh young tree when Shakespeare was born; it was hardly a middle-aged tree when he died; it was growing here when the first ship brought the white men to our shores, and hundreds and hundreds of those whom they call bravest, wisest, strongest, — warriors, statesmen, orators, and poets, - have been born, have grown up, lived, and died, while yet it has outlived them all. It has seen more wisdom than the best of them; but two or three hours of brutal strength sufficed to lay it low. Which of these dolts could make a tree? I'd like to see them do anything like it. How noisy and clumsy are all their movements, chopping, pounding, rasping, hammering! And, after all, what do they build? In the forest we do everything so quietly. A tree would be ashamed of itself that could not get its growth without making such a noise and dust and fuss. Our life is the perfection of good manners. For my part, I feel degraded at the mere presence of these human beings; but, alas! I am old; a hollow place at my heart warns me of the progress of decay, and probably it will be seized upon by these rapacious creatures as an excuse for laying me as low as my noble green brother."

In spite of all this disquiet about it, the little cottage grew and was finished. The walls were covered with pretty paper, the floors carpeted with pretty carpets; and, in fact, when it was all arranged, and the garden walks laid out, and beds of flowers planted around, it began to be confessed, even among the most critical, that it was not after all so bad a thing as was to have been feared.

A black ant went in one day and made a tour of exploration up and down, over chairs and tables, up the ceilings and down again, and, coming out, wrote an article for the Crickets' Gazette, in which he described the new abode as a veritable palace. Several butterflies fluttered in and sailed about and were wonderfully delighted, and then a bumble-bee and two or three honey-bees, who expressed themselves well pleased with the house, but more especially enchanted with the garden. In fact, when it was found that the proprietors were very fond of the rural solitudes of Nature, and had come out there for the purpose of enjoying them undisturbed, — that they watched and spared the anemones, and the violets, and bloodroots, and dog's-tooth violets, and little woolly rolls of fern that began to grow up under the trees in spring, — that they never allowed a gun to be fired to scare the birds, and watched the building of their nests with the greatest interest, then an opinion in favor of human beings began to gain ground, and every cricket and bird and beast was loud in their praise.

66 Mamma," said young Tit-bit, a frisky young squirrel, to his mother one

day, "why won't you let Frisky and me go into that pretty new cottage to play ?"

66

My dear," said his mother, who was a very wary and careful old squirrel, "how can you think of it? The race of man are full of devices for traps and pitfalls, and who could say what might happen, if you put yourself in their power? If you had wings like the butterflies and bees, you might fly in and out again, and so gratify your curiosity; but, as matters stand, it's best for you to keep well out of their way."

"But, mother, there is such a nice, good lady lives there! I believe she is a good fairy, and she seems to love us all so; she sits in the bow-window and watches us for hours, and she scatters corn all round at the roots of the tree for us to eat."

"She is nice enough," said the old mother-squirrel, "if you keep far enough off; but I tell you, you can't be too careful."

Now this good fairy that the squirrels discoursed about was a nice little old lady that the children used to call Aunt Esther, and she was a dear lover of birds and squirrels, and all sorts of animals, and had studied their little ways till she knew just what would please them; and so she would every day throw out crumbs for the sparrows, and little bits of thread and wool and cotton to help the birds that were building their nests, and would scatter corn and nuts for the squirrels; and while she sat at her work in the bow window she would smile to see the birds flying away with the wool, and the squirrels nibbling their nuts. After a while the birds grew so tame that they would hop into the bow-window, and eat their crumbs off the carpet.

"There, mamma," said Tit-bit and Frisky, "only see! Jenny Wren and Cock Robin have been in at the bow-window, and it did n't hurt them, and why can't we go?"

"Well, my dears," said old Mother Squirrel, "you must do it very carefully never forget that you have n't wings like Jenny Wren and Cock Robin."

So the next day Aunt Esther laid a train of corn from the roots of the trees to the bow-window, and then from the bow-window to her work-basket, which stood on the floor beside her; and then she put quite a handful of corn in the work-basket, and sat down by it, and seemed intent on her sewing. Very soon, creep, creep, creep, came Tit-bit and Frisky to the window, and then into the room, just as sly and as still as could be, and Aunt Esther sat just like a statue for fear of disturbing them. They looked all around in high glee, and when they came to the basket it seemed to them a wonderful little summer-house, made on purpose for them to play in. They nosed about in it, and turned over the scissors and the needle-book, and took a nibble at her white wax, and jostled the spools, meanwhile stowing away the corn each side of their little chops, till they both of them looked as if they had the mumps.

At last Aunt Esther put out her hand to touch them, when, whisk-frisk, out they went, and up the trees, chattering and laughing before she had time even to wink.