llies.

Many of our more vigorous species, as the butcherbird, the crossbills,
the pine grosbeak, the redpoll, the Bohemian chatterer, the shore lark,
the longspur, the snow bunting, etc., are common to both continents.

Have the Old World creatures throughout more pluck and hardihood than
those that are indigenous to this continent? Behold the common mouse,
how he has followed man to this country and established himself here
against all opposition, overrunning our houses and barns, while the
native species is rarely seen. And when has anybody seen the American
rat, while his congener from across the water has penetrated to every
part of the continent! By the next train that takes the family to some
Western frontier, arrives this pest. Both our rat and mouse or mice are
timid, harmless, delicate creatures, compared with the cunning, filthy,
and prolific specimens that have fought their way to us from the Old
World. There is little doubt, also, that the red fox has been
transplanted to this country from Europe. He is certainly on the
increase, and is fast running out the native gray species.

Indeed, I have thought that all forms of life in the Old World were
marked by greater prominence of type, or stronger characteristic and
fundamental qualities, than with us,--coarser and more hairy and
virile, and therefore more powerful and lasting. This opinion is still
subject to revision, but I find it easier to confirm it than to
undermine it.

IV

But let me change the strain and contemplate for a few moments this
feathered bandit,--this bird with the mark of Cain upon him, _Lanius
borealis,_--the great shrike or butcher-bird. Usually the character of
a bird of prey is well defined; there is no mistaking him. His claws,
his beak, his head, his wings, in fact his whole build, point to the
fact that he subsists upon live creatures; he is armed to catch them
and to slay them. Every bird knows a hawk and knows him from the start,
and is on the lookout for him. The hawk takes life, but he does it to
maintain his own, and it is a public and universally known fact. Nature
has sent him abroad in that character, and has advised all creatures of
it. Not so with the shrike; here she has concealed the character of a
murderer under a form as innocent as that of the robin. Feet, wings,
tail, color, head, and general form and size are all those of a
songbird,--very much like that master songster, the mockingbird,--yet
this bird is a