ious
taxpayer. He replied that it would be of no use; we hadn't any birds
now, and we shouldn't have any so long as the English sparrows were here
to drive them away. But it would be of use, notwithstanding; and
certainly it would afford a pleasure to many people to see flocks of
goldfinches, red-poll linnets, tree sparrows, and possibly of the
beautiful snow buntings, feeding in the Garden in midwinter.

Even as things are, however, the cold season is sure to bring us a few
butcher-birds. These come on business, and are now welcomed as public
benefactors, though formerly our sparrow-loving municipal authorities
thought it their duty to shoot them. They travel singly, as a rule, and
sometimes the same bird will be here for several weeks together. Then
you will have no trouble about finding here and there in the hawthorn
trees pleasing evidences of his activity and address. Collurio is
brought up to be in love with his work. In his Mother Goose it is
written,--

Fe, fi, fo, farrow!
I smell the blood of an English sparrow;

and however long he may live, he never forgets his early training. His
days, as the poet says, are "bound each to each by natural piety." Happy
lot! wherein duty and conscience go ever hand in hand; for whose
possessor

"Love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security."

In appearance the shrike resembles the mocking-bird. Indeed, a policeman
whom I found staring at one would have it that he _was_ a mocking-bird.
"Don't you _see_ he is? And he's been singing, too." I had nothing to
say against the singing, since the shrike will often twitter by the
half hour in the very coldest weather. But further discussion concerning
the bird's identity was soon rendered needless; for, while we were
talking, along came a sparrow, and dropped carelessly into a hawthorn
bush, right under the shrike's perch. The latter was all attention
instantly, and, after waiting till the sparrow had moved a little out of
the thick of the branches, down he pounced. He missed his aim, or the
sparrow was too quick for him, and although he made a second swoop, and
followed that by a hot chase, he speedily came back without his prey.
This little exertion, however, seemed to have provoked his appetite;
for, instead of resuming his coffee-tree perch, he went into the
hawthorn, and began to feed upon the carcass of a bird which, it seemed,
he had previously laid up in store. He was soon frightened off for a f