mer Tanager--the only
one I ever saw in this neighbourhood It is so rare here that I shot it
to make sure there was no mistake, and you probably never saw one alive,
for the Summer Tanager is a tender bird, who seldom strays so far north
as this. But see--what do you think of this--isn't it a beauty?"

So saying, the Doctor took out of his pocket a bird-skin he had provided
for the occasion, and the children could not restrain their glee at the
sight.

"Oh! oh!" exclaimed Dodo, clapping her hands as she always did when
excited; "it's all gold and ruby and jet. Where did you get it, Uncle
Roy?"

"A friend of mine sent it to me from Oregon," answered the Doctor; "he
thought I would like to have it for my collection, because it came from
the very region where this kind of Tanager was discovered almost a
hundred years ago."

"I thought you said it was a Louisiana Tanager," said Rap and Nat,
almost in the same breath.

"So it is, boys; but it does not live in the State of Louisiana you are
thinking about, down by the mouth of the Mississippi River. I shall have
to explain how it got its name by giving you a little lesson in the
history and geography of our country. A great many years ago there was a
King of France called Louis the Fourteenth, and during his reign all the
western parts of America that the French had discovered or acquired any
claim to were named Louisiana in his honor by one of the missionaries
who came over to convert the Indians to Christianity. After a good many
years more, about the beginning of this century, President Jefferson
bought all this immense country from Napoleon Bonaparte, and that made
it a part of the United States--every part of them that is now ours from
the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, except some that we
afterward took from Mexico. President Jefferson was a very wise man, and
as soon as he had bought all this land he wanted to know about it. So he
sent an expedition to explore it, under two brave captains named Lewis
and Clark. They were gone almost three years; and one day,--I remember
now, it was the sixth of June, 1806,--when they were camping in what is
now Idaho, near the border of Oregon, they found this lovely bird, and
wrote a description of it in their note-books--just as you did with your
Scarlet Tanager, Dodo, only theirs was the first one anybody ever
wrote. They also saved the specimen and afterward gave it to Alexander
Wilson, who painted the first picture