her. She snapped at it in a twinkling, but retained it between her mandibles. Whether she would finally have swallowed it I am not able to say (and so must leave undecided a very interesting and important question in economic ornithology), for just then I remembered a piece of banana with which I had been meaning to tempt her. Of this she tasted at once, and, as I thought, found it good; for she transfixed it with her bill, and, quitting her seat, carried it away and deposited it on a branch. But instead of eating it, as I expected to see her do, she fell to fly-catching, while her mate promptly appeared, and as soon as opportunity offered took his turn at brooding. My eyes, meanwhile, had not kept the two distinct, and, supposing that the mother had returned, I stepped up to offer her another drink, but had no sooner filled the spoon than the fellow took flight. At this the female came to the rescue again, and unhesitatingly entered the nest. It was a noble reproof, I thought; well deserved, and very handsomely administered. "Oh, you cowardly dear," I fancied her saying,

"he'll not hurt you. See me, now! I'm not afraid. He's queer, I know; but he means well."

I should have mentioned that while the squirrel was barking she uttered some very pretty sotto voce notes of two kinds,—one like what I have often heard, and one entirely novel.

A man ought to have lived with such a creature, year in and out, and seen it under every variety of mood and condition, before imagining himself possessed of its entire vocabulary. For who doubts that birds, also, have their more sacred and intimate feelings, their esoteric doctrines and experiences, which are not proclaimed upon the tree-top, but spoken under breath, in all but inaudible twitters? Certainly this pet of mine on sundry occasions whispered into my ear things which I had never heard before, and as to the purport of which, in my ignorance of the vireonian tongue, I could only conjecture. For my own part, I am through with thinking that I have mastered all the notes of any bird, even the commonest.

I wondered, by the bye, whether my

speech was as unintelligible to the greenlet as hers was to me. I trust, at all events, that she divined a meaning in the tones, however she may have missed the words; for I never called without telling her how much I admired her spirit. She was all that a bird ought to be, I assured her, good, brave, and handsome; and should never suffer harm, if I could help it. Alas! although, as the apostle says, I loved "not in word, but in deed and in truth," yet when the pinch came I was somewhere else, and all my promises went for nothing.

Our intercourse was nearing its end. It was already the 10th of June, and on the 12th I was booked for a journey. During my last visit but one it gratified me not a little to perceive that the wife's example and reproof had begun to tell upon her mate. He happened to be in the nest as I came up, and sat so unconcernedly while I made ready to feed him that I took it for granted I was dealing with the female, till at the last moment he slipped away. I stepped aside for perhaps fifteen feet, and waited briefly, both birds in sight. Then the lady took her turn at sitting, and I

proceeded to try again. She behaved like herself, made free with a number of insects, and then, all at once, for no reason that I could guess at, she sprang out of the nest, and alighted on the ground within two yards of my feet, and almost before I could realize what had occurred was up in the tree. I had my eyes upon her, determined, if possible, to keep the pair distinct, and succeeded, as I believed, in so doing. Pretty soon the male (unless I was badly deceived) went to the nest with a large insect in his bill, and stood for some time beside it, eating and chattering. Finally he dropped upon the eggs, and, seeing him grown thus unsuspicious, I thought best to test him once more. This time he kept his seat, and with great condescension ate two of my plant-lice. But there he made an end. Again and again I put the third one to his mouth; but he settled back obstinately into the nest, and would have none of it. For once, as it seemed, he could be brave; but he was not to be coddled, or treated like a baby—or a female. There were good reasons, of course, for his being less hungry than his mate, and

consequently less appreciative of such favors as I had to bestow; but it was very amusing to see how tightly he shut his bill, as if his mind were made up, and no power on earth should shake it.

If any inquisitive person raises the question whether I am absolutely certain of this bird's being the male, I must answer in the negative. The couple were dressed alike, as far as I could make out, save that the female was much the more brightly washed with yellow on the sides of the body; and my present discrimination of them was based upon close attention to this point, as well as upon my careful and apparently successful effort not to confuse the two, after the one which I knew to be the female (the one, that is, which had done most of the sitting, and had all along been so very familiar) had joined the other among the branches. I had no downright proof, it must be acknowledged, nor could I have had any without killing and dissecting the bird; but my own strong conviction was and is that the male had grown fearless by observing my treatment of his spouse, but from some difference of taste,

or, more probably, for lack of appetite, found himself less taken than she had commonly been with my rather meagre bill of fare.

This persuasion, it cannot be denied, was considerably shaken the next morning, when I paid my friends a parting call. The father bird, forgetful of his own good example of the day before, and mindless of all the proprieties of such a farewell occasion, slipped incontinently from the eggs just as I was removing the cover from my pen-box. Well, he missed the last opportunity he was likely ever to have of breakfasting from a human finger. So ignorant are birds, no less than men, of the day of their visitation! Before I could get away,—while I was yet within two yards of the nest,—the other bird hastened to occupy the vacant place. She knew what was due to so considerate and well-tried a friend, if her partner did not. The little darling! As soon as she was well in position I stepped to her side, opened my treasures, and gave her, one by one, twenty-six insects (all I had), which she took with avidity, reaching forward again and again to anticipate

my motions. Then I stole a last look at the four pretty eggs, having almost to force her from the nest for that purpose, bade her good-by, and came away, sorry enough to leave her; forecasting, as I could not help doing, the slight probability of finding her again on my return, and picturing to myself all the sweet, motherly ways she would be certain to develop as soon as the little ones were hatched.

Within an hour I was speeding toward the Green Mountains. There, in those ancient Vermont forests, I saw and heard other solitary vireos, but none that treated me as my Melrose pair had done. Noble and gentle spirits! though I were to live a hundred years, I should never see their like again.

The remainder of the story is, unhappily, soon told. I was absent a fortnight, and on getting back went at once to the sacred oak. Alas! there was nothing but a severed branch to show where the vireos' nest had hung. The cut looked recent; I was thankful for that. Perhaps the "collector," whoever he was, had been kind enough to wait till the owners of the house were done