of a long stick, he captured them by
putting it over their necks and hauling them to him. In some cases not
even this contrivance was needed. A species of mockingbird in
particular, larger than ours and a splendid songster, made itself so
familiar as to be almost a nuisance, hopping on the table where the
collector was writing, and scattering the pens and paper. Eighteen
species were found, twelve of them peculiar to the island.

Thoreau relates that in the woods of Maine the Canada jay will
sometimes make its meal with the lumbermen, taking the food out of
their hands.

Yet notwithstanding the birds have come to look upon man as their
natural enemy, there can be little doubt that civilization is on the
whole favorable to their increase and perpetuity, especially to the
smaller species. With man comes flies and moths, and insects of all
kinds in greater abundance; new plants and weeds are introduced, and,
with the clearing up of the country, are sowed broadcast over the
land.

The larks and snow buntings that come to us from the north subsist
almost entirely upon the seeds of grasses and plants; and how many of
our more common and abundant species are field-birds, and entire
strangers to deep forests?

In Europe some birds have become almost domesticated, like the house
sparrow; and in our own country the cliff swallow seems to have
entirely abandoned ledges and shelving rocks, as a place to nest, for
the eaves and projections of farm and other outbuildings.

After one has made the acquaintance of most of the land-birds, there
remain the seashore and its treasures. How little one knows of the
aquatic fowls, even after reading carefully the best authorities, was
recently forced home to my mind by the following circumstance: I was
spending a vacation in the interior of New York, when one day a
stranger alighted before the house, and with a cigar box in his hand
approached me as I sat in the doorway. I was about to say that he
would waste his time in recommending his cigars to me, as I never
smoked, when he said that, hearing I knew something about birds, he
had brought me one which had been picked up a few hours before in a
hay-field near the village, and which was stranger to all who had seen
it. As he began to undo the box I expected to see some of our own
rarer birds, perhaps the rose-breasted grosbeak or Bohemian chatterer.
Imagine, then, how I was taken aback when I beheld instead a
swallow-shaped bird, quite