ry way of singing. Now, too, queer little spots began to appear
in his plumage, dots of bright reddish chestnut, first on one side of
the breast, then about the tail coverts, till after a month he looked
like patchwork of the "crazy" sort. All this time his song was gaining
in strength and volume, till by the first of May he could outsing any
bird in the room.

[Sidenote: _UTTERLY UNLOVELY._]

To outdo in some way was his delight, and he regularly discomfited the
singers and silenced the gentle ripple of thrush music in the house by
his loud carol. Later, the weather became settled, the well and perfect
birds were given their liberty, and he had the bird-room to himself, the
only utterly unlovely bird I ever knew.

The relations of a pair of Baltimore orioles at the same time were not
much more harmonious; but the little dame being more spirited than her
neighbor, things arranged themselves differently.

I introduced the pair by the rather summary process of putting both into
one large cage. She had suffered at the hands of mankind, and her
plumage was in a terribly draggled state; and clothes have as much to do
with self-respect in the feathered world as in our own. Her condition of
general wreck was so complete as to leave her without a tail,--the last
stage of respectability. She was depressed in spirits, and at first did
not gainsay the dictation of the bird already in possession. He drove
her away from the food-dishes, denied her a place on his perch, and in
fact set up for lord and master, and she submitted for a time.

It was amusing to see these birds trying, on the first evening, to
settle the question of sleeping-quarters. As usual, the mind of the male
was made up, and he planted himself in the darkest corner of the upper
perch away from the window, shook himself out, and considered the matter
decided. The meek little new-comer did not aspire to his corner, but she
ardently desired a place on that farther perch, and after he became
quiet she resolved to try for it. Too modest to approach it in the
natural way, from the lower perches, she scrambled up the wires of the
cage, and shyly came on from the back. The autocrat was not asleep, and
the instant her foot touched it he bounced across the cage to the other
upper perch. He evidently expected that she would be put to shame in her
surreptitious attempt to share his perch, and would at once retire to
her proper sphere; but he was mistaken. So far from being