ain,
and so on to the end, coming down at every jump as though he weighed a
pound or two. He was much addicted to sitting with breast-feathers
puffed out covering his toes, or sometimes with wings held a little way
from his body, showing the delicate rose-colored lining, as though
conscious how pretty he looked; and among other eccentric habits he
often thrust out his tongue, first one side and then the other,
apparently to clean his bill.

Bathing and getting dry was conducted by this peculiar bird in a manner
characteristic of himself. Slow to make the plunge, he was equally
deliberate in coming out of the bath. When fairly in, he first thrust
his head under, then sat up in the drollest way, head quite out of water
and tail lying flat on the bottom, while he spattered vigorously with
wings and tail. When he stepped out, the bath was over; he never
returned for a second dip, but passed at once to a favorite corner of
the window-bar, and stood there a most disconsolate-looking object,
shivering with cold, with plumage completely disheveled, but making not
the least effort to dry his feathers for several minutes. If the sun
shone, he indulged himself in a sunning, erecting the feathers of his
chin till he looked as if he wore a black muffler, opening his tail like
a fan, spreading and crossing his wings over the back. This attitude
made a complete change in his looks, showing white where black should
be, and _vice versa_. This was the result of his peculiar coloring. Next
the skin all feathers were the common slate-color, but outside of that
each feather was black and white. On the back the black was at the tip,
and the white between that and the slate-color; on the breast this order
was reversed, and the white at the tip. Thus when wet the white and
black were confused, and he resembled an object in patch-work. The
rose-colored shield was formed by the slightest possible tips of that
color on the white ends, and it was wonderful that they should arrange
themselves in an unbroken figure, with a sharply defined outline, for
each feather must have lain in its exact place to secure the result.

The different ways in which birds greet advancing night has long been a
subject of interest to me, some restless and nervous, others calm, and a
few wild and apparently frightened. In no one thing is there more
individuality of action, and in my room that winter were exhibited every
evening quite a variety of methods. A brown thrush