ture of
the wooing of a pair of Sparrows in a maple tree, within sight of her
city window, their setting up house-keeping, domestic quarrel,
separation, and the bringing home, immediately after, of a new bride
by the Cock Sparrow.

She knows him to be a domestic tryant, a bully in fact, self-willed and
violent, holding out, whatever the cause of disagreement, till he gets
his own will; that the voices of the females are less harsh than the
males, the chatter among themselves being quite soft, as is their
"baby-talk" to the young brood.

That they delight in a mob we all know; whether a domestic skirmish or
danger to a nest, how they will all congregate, chirping, pecking,
scolding, and often fighting in a fierce yet amusing way! One cannot
read these chapters of Mrs. Miller's without agreeing with Whittier:

"Then, smiling to myself, I said,--
How like are men and birds!"

Although a hardy bird, braving the snow and frost of winter, it likes a
warm bed, to which it may retire after the toils of the day. To this end
its resting place, as well as its nest, is always stuffed with downy
feathers. Tramp, Hoodlum, Gamin, Rat of the Air! Notwithstanding these
more or less deserved names, however, one cannot view a number of
homeless Sparrows, presumably the last brood, seeking shelter in any
corner or crevice from a winter's storm, without a feeling of deep
compassion. The supports of a porch last winter made but a cold roosting
place for three such wanderers within sight of our study window, and
never did we behold them, 'mid a storm of sleet and rain, huddle down in
their cold, ill-protected beds, without resolving another winter should
see a home prepared for them.

ALLEN'S HUMMING BIRD.

The Humming birds, with their varied beauties, constitute the most
remarkable feature of the bird-life of America. They have absolutely no
representatives in any other part of the world, the Swifts being the
nearest relatives they have in other countries. Mr. Forbes says that
they abound most in mountainous countries, where the surface and
productions of the soil are most diversified within small areas. They
frequent both open and rare and inaccessible places, and are often found
on the snowy peaks of Chimborazo as high as 16,000 feet, and in the very
lowest valleys in the primeval forests of Brazil, the vast palm-covered
districts of the deltas of the Amazon and Orinoco, the fertile flats and
savannahs of Demarara