to a late period in the summer, and may be heard sometimes in the third week in August.

THE WINTER-WREN.

We do not often meet with this bird near Boston in summer. He is then a resident of the northern parts of Maine and New Hampshire, and of the Green Mountain range. In the autumn he migrates from the north and may be occasionally seen in company with our other winter birds. In our own latitude, if the cold season drives him farther south, we meet him again early in the spring, making his journey to his northern home. While he remains with us we see him near the shelving banks of rivers, creeping about old stumps of trees, which, half decayed, furnish a frugal share of his dormant insect-food. He is so little afraid of man that he will often leave his native resorts, and may be seen, like our common HouseWren, examining the wood-pile, creeping into the holes of old stone-walls and about the foundations of out-houses. Not having seen this bird except in winter, I am unacquainted with his song. Samuels describes it as very melodious and delightful.

THE MARSH WREN.

I was once crossing by turnpike an extensive meadow which was overgrown with reeds and rushes, when my curiosity was excited by hearing, in a thicket on the banks of a streamlet, a sound that would hardly admit of being described. I could not tell whether it came from. an asthmatic bird or an aggravated frog. The sound was unlike anything I had ever heard. I should have supposed, however, if there were Mocking-Birds in our woods, that one of them had concealed himself in the thicket and was attempting to imitate the braying of an ass. I sat down upon the railing of a rustic bridge that crossed the

stream, and watched for a sight of the imp that must be concealed there. In less than a minute there emerged from it a Marsh-Wren, whisking and flitting about with gestures as peculiar though not as awkward as his burlesque song.

If I believed, as some writers affirm, that birds learn their song from their parents, who carry them along from one step to another as if they had a musical gamut before them, I might have conjectured that this bird had been taught by a frog, and that, despising his teacher, he strove not to learn his reptile notes but to burlesque them. As I was walking homeward, I could not but reflect that Nature, who is sometimes personified as an old dame, must have indulged her mirthfulness when she created a bird with the voice of a reptile.

Dr. Brewer describes the nest of the Marsh-Wren as nearly spherical, composed externally of coarse sedges firmly interwoven, cemented with mud and clay, and impervious to the weather. An orifice is left on one side for entrance, having on the upper side a projecting edge to protect it from rain. The inside is lined with soft. grass, feathers, and the cottony product of various plants. It is commonly placed on a low bush a few feet from the ground.

This species, like all the Wrens, has great activity and industry, consumes immense quantities of small insects, is very petulant in its manners, and manifests a superior degree of intelligence and courage.

THE PLUMAGE OF BIRDS.

THE colors and forms of the plumage of birds are generally regarded as mere accidents, unattended with any advantages in their economy. I cannot believe, however, that they are not in some way, which we cannot fully understand, indispensable to their existence as a species. Let me then endeavor to discover, if possible, the design. of Nature in spreading such a variety of tints upon the plumage of birds, and to learn the advantages they derive from these native ornaments. Do they affect the vision of birds with the sensation of beauty, and serve to attract together individuals of the same species? Or are they designed also to protect them from the keen sight of their enemies, while flitting among the blossoms of the trees? It is probable that each of these purposes is subserved by this provision of Nature. She has clothed individuals of the same species and the same sex with uniformity, that they may readily identify their own kindred, and has given them an innate susceptibility to derive pleasure from those colors that predominate in the plumage of their own species. She has likewise distinguished the small birds that live on trees by beautiful colors, while those in general that run upon the ground are marked by neutral tints, that the former may be less easily observed among the blossoms of the trees, and that the latter may be less conspicuous while sitting or running upon the ground.

It is well known that the males of many species are more beautifully and brilliantly decorated than the females, and that the singing-birds in general have less

beauty of color than the unmusical species. As an explanation of this fact we must consider that the singingbirds are more humble in their habitats than others. The brightly colored birds chiefly frequent the forests and lofty trees. Such are the woodpecker, the troupial, and many species of tropical birds. The northern temperate latitudes are the region of the grasses, which afford sustenance to a large proportion of the singing-birds — the finches and buntings of that part of the world. Some of the finches are high-colored, but these usually build in trees, like the purple finch and the goldfinch. But the sparrows and the larks, that build in a bush or on the ground, are plainly dressed. The thrushes, which are equally plain in their dress, build in low bushes, and take their food chiefly from the ground. Indeed, it might be practicable to distinguish among a variety of strange birds the species that live and nestle in trees by their brighter plumage.

In our own latitude the species that frequent the shrubbery are of a brown or olive-brown of different shades. They are dressed in colors that blend with the general tints of the ground and herbage while they are seeking their food or sitting upon their nests. Birds, however, do not differ much in the colors of the hidden parts of their plumage. Beneath they are almost universally of grayish or whitish tints, so that, while sitting on a branch, the reptiles lurking for them may not, when looking upward, distinguish them from the hues of the clouds and the sky and the grayish undersurface of the leaves of trees. Water-birds are generally gray all over, except a tinge of blue in their plumage above. Ducks, however, are many of them variegated with green and other colors that harmonize with the weeds and plants of the shore upon which they feed.

Nature works on the same plan in guarding insects