preceded them, as if Nature, like a partial mother, had lavished her best gifts upon these her youngest children. The bushes that support them are overtopped by other plants, that seem to feel an envious delight in concealing them from observation, but they cannot blot them from our memory, nor be admired as we admire them. The clethra with its white odoriferous flowers, and the buttonbush with its elegant globular heads, strive vainly to equal them in fragrance or beauty. The proud and scornful thistle rears its head close by their side, and seems to mock at the fragility of these lovely flowers; but the wild briar, though its roses have faded, still gives out its undying perfume, as if the essence of the withered flowers lingered about their former leafy habitation, like spirits about the places they loved in their lifetime.

In the latter part of the month we begin to mark the approaching footsteps of autumn. Twilight is chill, and we perceive the greater length of the nights and evening's earlier dew. The morning sun is later in the heavens, and sooner tints the fleecy clouds of evening. The bright verdure of the trees has faded to a more dusky green; and here and there in different parts of the woods may be found a sere and yellow leaf, like the white hairs that are interspersed among the dark-brown tresses of manhood, that indicate the sure advance of hoary years. The fields of ripe and yellow grain gleam through the open places in the woods, making a pleasant contrast with their greenness, displaying in the same instant the signs of a cheerful harvest and the melancholy decay of vegetation. The swallows assemble their little hosts upon the roofs and fences, preparing for their annual migration, and all things announce the speedy decline of summer.

BIRDS OF THE PASTURE AND FOREST.

III.

THE CUCKOO.

OUR native Cuckoos have not the free-love instinct of the European Cuckoo; and Daines Barrington would have been delighted to quote their good parental habits as an argument in his special plea for the European bird, whom he considered the victim of slander. The Cowbird is our Cuckoo in the moral acceptation of the term. The American Cuckoo is attached to its offspring in a remarkable degree, and rears them with all the fidelity of the most devoted parents. In my boyhood, the two severest fights I had with birds on approaching their nests were once when I examined the nest of a Bluejay, and again when I examined one belonging to a Cuckoo. The young Cuckoos were equally savage when I attempted to handle them. Yet this bird bears the reputation of cowardice.

It is remarkable that the American Cuckoo, though a faithful and devoted parent, should have certain peculiar habits connected with laying and hatching, that bear some evidence that the European and American species have a common derivation. The habit of the European bird of dropping its eggs into other birds' nests is probably connected with continued laying, extended to a greater length of time than with other birds. The same fertility has been observed in the American Cuckoos. Mr. Audubon mentions the peculiar habit of these birds of laying fresh eggs and hatching them successively. Thus

it would seem that the last-laid eggs were hatched by the involuntary brooding of the young which had not left the nest. Dr. Brewer has "repeatedly found in a nest three young and two eggs, one of the latter nearly fresh, one with the embryo half developed, while of the young birds, one would be just out of the shell, one half fledged, and one just ready to fly. Subsequent obser

vations in successive seasons led to the conviction that both the Yellow-billed and the Black-billed Cuckoo share in these peculiarities, and that it is a general but not universal practice."

Dr. Brewer mentions an interesting fact that evinces the strong attachment of the Cuckoo to its offspring. Speaking of the Black-billed Cuckoo, he says: "Both parents are assiduous in the duties of incubation and in supplying food to each other and their offspring. In one instance where the female had been shot by a thoughtless boy, as she flew from the nest, the male bird successfully devoted himself to the solitary duty of rearing the brood of five. At the time of the death of the female, the nest contained two eggs and three young birds. The writer was present when the bird was shot, and was unable to interfere in season to prevent it. Returning to the spot not long afterwards, he found the widowed male sitting upon the nest, and so unwilling to leave it as almost to permit himself to be captured by the hand. His fidelity and his entreaties were not disregarded. This nest, eggs, and young were left undisturbed; and as they were visited from time to time, the young nestlings were found to thrive under his vigilant care. The eggs were hatched out, and in time the whole five were reared in safety."

The Cuckoo is an early visitor. His voice is often heard before the first of May, proclaiming that "the spring is coming in," like his congener in England, who has always been regarded as the harbinger of that season.

His note is not strictly musical, yet we all listen to the first sound of his voice with as much pleasure as to that of the Bluebird or Song-Sparrow. I have not met a person who was not delighted to hear it. It may be called, figuratively, one of the picturesque sounds in Nature, reminding us of the resurrection of the long-hidden charms of the season. The Cuckoo is swift in his flight, which resembles that of a Dove so much that I have often mistaken them. In plumage and general shape this bird is like the Red-Thrush, with some mixture of olive.

THE COWBIRD.

Young nest-hunters, who are persistent in their enterprises, and who pursue their occupation partly from rational curiosity and not from mere wantonness, are often surprised on finding in the nest of some small bird a single egg larger than others in the same nest. In my own days of academic truancy, I found this superfluous egg most frequently in Sparrows' nests. It was not until I had made a large collection of eggs that I discovered the parentage of the odd ones. These eggs were generally speckled; but I occasionally found a large bluish egg among others of the same color, and supposed they must contain two yolks, save that birds in a wild state seldom produce such monstrosities. Can it be that the American Cuckoo occasionally follows the instincts of his European congener? In each case I considered the spurious eggs as lawful plunder, since they were an imposition practised upon the owner of the nest either by some unknown bird or by the Cowbird, a member of a family which are too aristocratic to rear their own offspring. But as a politician of the speculative class I feel a peculiar interest in the Cowbird, as affording me an opportunity of understanding the system of free love, as exemplified in the habits of this species.

The Cowbird has no song. Nature seldom furnishes instinct which would be of no serWhat occasion has the Cowbird for neither wooes nor marries,

any creature with an vice to the species. a song, a bird that a bird that would not sing lullabies to its own young; that cares no more for one female than for another, and whose indifference is perfectly reciprocated? As well might a poet write Petrarchian sonnets who was never in love; or a practical plodder write amatory songs, who asks the members of a church whom he shall marry. There is nothing romantic in this bird's character. His love is a mere gravitation. Nature, despising his habits, has not even arrayed him in attractive plumage; for why should he have beauty when his whole species are without the sentiment that could appreciate it? The Cowbirds are the free-love party among the feathered tribes, the party also of communism, who would leave their offspring in others' hands, that they may have leisure for æsthetic culture.

This species," says Dr. Brewer, “is at all times gregarious and polygamous, never mating and never exhibiting any signs of either conjugal or parental affection. Like the Cuckoos of Europe, our Cow-Blackbird never constructs a nest of her own, and never hatches out or attempts to rear her own offspring, but imposes her eggs upon other birds; and most of them, either unconscious of the imposition or unable to rid themselves of the alien, sit upon and hatch the stranger, and in so doing virtually destroy their own offspring; for the eggs of the Cowbird are the first hatched, usually two days before the others. The nursling is much larger in size, filling up a large portion of the nest, and is insatiable in appetite, always clamoring to be fed, and receiving by far the larger share of the food brought to her nest; its foster companions, either starved or stifled, soon die, and their dead bodies are