th his dignity was past endurance; he hissed, and snapped his
beak at the elusive little creatures, and finally worked himself into
such a rage that he was found completely exhausted, and almost in a
dying condition. These continued excitements, indeed, so wore upon his
sensitive nature that he did not long survive his extreme passion.

This was the more to be regretted because of the readiness with which he
accepted his fate. He became tame in a week after capture, and readily
took food from the fingers. From the first he never made the least
effort to escape, but seemed perfectly contented, so long as he was
alone. It was the presence of intruders--as he regarded them--that he
resented so fatally.

One of this most interesting family, Townsend's fly-catching thrush
(_Myadestes Townsendii_) is resident in the mountains of Colorado, and
it is pleasing to see how the most scientific and the least emotional of
chroniclers fall into rapture over his song. "Never have I heard a more
delightful chorus of bird music," says one. "The song can be compared to
nothing uttered by any other bird I have heard," says another. "A most
exquisite song in which the notes of purple finch, wood thrush, and
winter wren are blended into a silvery cascade of melody that ripples
and dances down the mountain-side as clear and sparkling as the mountain
brook," says a third.

Charles Dudley Warner, who found the clarin a favorite cage bird in
Mexico, says of his song (in "Mexican Notes"): "Its long, liquid,
full-throated note is more sweet and thrilling than any other bird note
I have ever heard; it is hardly a song, but a flood of melody,
elevating, inspiring as the skylark, but with a touch of the tender
melancholy of the nightingale in the night."

XIII.

INCOMPATIBILITY IN THE ORIOLE FAMILY.

One whole year I entertained in my bird-room an individual of strongly
marked character, an orchard oriole. Wishing to study his habits, I put
a pair of this species into a big cage, hoping they would live happily,
as did other couples in the room at the same time. The pretty little
yellow and olive dame was amiable enough,--she could live in peace with
any bird in the room; but her comrade rebelled against the decrees of
man. He was an autocrat; he intended to have his house to himself, and,
more, he purposed to appropriate any other residence he chose to select,
whoever might claim it. Hostilities began the moment the door was shut
upon