hem
just as useful as you find yours, and a little more so. I know this
much, that if I had to catch all my food in the air I'd want whiskers
and lots of them so that the insects would get tangled in them. I
suppose that's what Whip-poor-will's are for."

"I beg your pardon, Jenny Wren," said Peter very humbly. "Of course
Whip-poor-will has whiskers if you say so. By the way, do the
Whip-poor-wills do any better in the matter of a nest than the
Nighthawks?"

"Not a bit," replied Jenny Wren. "Mrs. Whip-poor-will lays her eggs
right on the ground, but usually in the Green Forest where it is dark
and lonesome. Like Mrs. Nighthawk, she lays only two. It's the same way
with another second cousin, Chuck-will's-widow."

"Who?" cried Peter, wrinkling his brows.

"Chuck-will's-widow," Jenny Wren fairly shouted it. "Don't you know
Chuck-will's-widow?"

Peter shook his head. "I never heard of such a bird," he confessed.

"That's what comes of never having traveled," retorted Jenny Wren.
"If you'd ever been in the South the way I have you would know
Chuck-will's-widow. He looks a whole lot like the other two we've been
talking about, but has even a bigger mouth. What's more, he has whiskers
with branches. Now you needn't look as if you doubted that, Peter
Rabbit; it's so. In his habits he's just like his cousins, no nest and
only two eggs. I never saw people so afraid to raise a real family. If
the Wrens didn't do better than that, I don't know what would become of
us." You know Jenny usually has a family of six or eight.

CHAPTER XXIV. The Warblers Arrive.

If there is one family of feathered friends which perplexes Peter Rabbit
more than another, it is the Warbler family.

"So many of them come together and they move about so constantly that
a fellow doesn't have a chance to look at one long enough to recognize
him," complained Peter to Jenny Wren one morning when the Old Orchard
was fairly alive with little birds no bigger than Jenny Wren herself.

And such restless little folks as they were!

They were not still an instant, flitting from tree to tree, twig to
twig, darting out into the air and all the time keeping up an endless
chattering mingled with little snatches of song. Peter would no sooner
fix his eyes on one than another entirely different in appearance would
take its place. Occasionally he would see one whom he recognized, one
who would stay for the nesting season. But the majority of them would
stop