s, who have
travelled with the lines of longitude by guides and tracks over that
invisible road as unerring as those of the railway. We shall find them
in close companionship with friends unknown in our latitude, whose
abiding-places are at the South, as those left behind are fixed dwellers
at the North.

From the window at which I sit on this morning late in January and this
parallel of thirty degrees,--window open, as well as the door, for no
norther is on duty to-day,--I see flocks of our familiar redwings,
cowbirds, and blackbirds, all mingled together as though the hard and
fast lines of species had been obliterated and made as meaningless as
the concededly evanescent shades of variety, trooping busily over the
lawn and blackening the leafless China-trees. But they have a crony
never seen by us. This is the crow-blackbird of the South, or jackdaw as
it is wrongly called, otherwise known as the boat-tailed grackle, from
his over-allowance of rudder that pulls him side-wise and ruins his
dead-reckoning when a wind is on. His wife is a sober-looking lady in a
suit of steel-gray, and the pair are quite conspicuous among their
winter guests. The latter are far less shy than we are accustomed to
find them, a majority being young in their first season and with little
or no experience of human guile. No one cares to shoot them, in the
abundance of larger game, and the absence of stones from the fat
prairie-soil places them out of danger from the small boy. Their only
foe is the hawk, who levies blackmail on them as coolly and regularly as
any other plumed cateran. Partly, perhaps, by reason of this outside
pressure, they are cheek by jowl with the poultry,--the cow-bunting,
which is the pet prey of the hawk, following them into the back porch
and insisting sometimes on breakfasting with Tray,--or rather with
Legion, for that is the name of the Texas dog. In this familiarity they
are approached, though not equalled, by that more home-staying bird the
meadow-lark, who is here a dweller of the lawn and garden and adds his
mellow whistle to the orchestra of the mocking-bird. This so-called lark
is classed by most naturalists among the starlings, as are two of the
blackbirds, which two he resembles in some of his habits, but not in
migrating, being about as much of a continental as any other biped
American. Nor is he like his cousins in changes of dress. Out of a dozen
of the latter that may be brought down at a shot, you will