and carrying all before them.

Our cedar or cherry bird is the most silent bird we have. Our
neutral-tinted birds, like him, as a rule are our finest songsters;
but he has no song or call, uttering only a fine bead-like note on
taking flight. This note is the cedar-berry rendered back in sound.
When the ox-heart cherries, which he has only recently become
acquainted with, have had time to enlarge his pipe and warm his
heart, I shall expect more music from him. But in lieu of music, what
a pretty compensation are those minute, almost artificial-like,
plumes of orange and vermilion that tip the ends of his wing quills!
Nature could not give him these and a song too. She has given the
hummingbird a jewel upon his throat, but no song, save the hum of his
wings.

Another bird that is occasionally borne to us on the crest of the cold
waves from the frozen zone, and that is repeated on a smaller scale in
a permanent resident, is the pine grosbeak; his _alter ego,_ reduced in
size, is the purple finch, which abounds in the higher latitudes of the
temperate zone. The color and form of the two birds are again
essentially the same. The females and young males of both species are
of a grayish brown like the sparrow, while in the old males this tint
is imperfectly hidden beneath a coat of carmine, as if the color had
been poured upon their heads, where it is strongest, and so oozed down
and through the rest of the plumage. Their tails are considerably
forked, their beaks cone-shaped and heavy, and their flight undulating.
Those who have heard the grosbeak describe its song as similar to that
of the finch, though no doubt it is louder and stronger. The finch's
instrument is a fife tuned to love and not to war. He blows a clear,
round note, rapid and intricate, but full of sweetness and melody. His
hardier relative with that larger beak and deeper chest must fill the
woods with sounds. Audubon describes its song as exceedingly rich and
full.

As in the case of the Bohemian waxwing, this bird is also common to
both worlds, being found through Northern Europe and Asia and the
northern parts of this continent. It is the pet of the pine-tree, and
one of its brightest denizens. Its visits to the States are irregular
and somewhat mysterious. A great flight of them occurred in the winter
of 1874-75. They attracted attention all over the country. Several
other flights of them have occurred during the century. When this bird
comes, it is s