her nest-building, but never, so far as I have observed, assisting
her. One spring I observed with much interest a phoebe-bird building
her nest not far from my cabin in the woods. The male looked on
approvingly, but did not help. He perched most of the time on a
mullein stalk near the little spring run where Phoebe came for mud.
In the early morning hours she made her trips at intervals of a minute
or two. The male flirted his tail and called encouragingly, and when
she started up the hill with her load he would accompany her part way,
to help her over the steepest part, as it were, then return to his
perch and watch and call for her return. For an hour or more I
witnessed this little play in bird life, in which the female's part
was so primary and the male's so secondary. There is something in such
things that seems to lend support to Professor Lester F. Ward's
contention, as set forth in his "Pure Sociology," that in the natural
evolution of the two sexes the female was first and the male second;
that he was made from her rib, so to speak, and not she from his.

With our phalarope and a few Australian birds, the position of the two
sexes as indicated above is reversed, the females having the
ornaments and bright colors and doing the courting, while the male
does the incubating. In a few cases also the female is much the more
masculine, noisy, and pugnacious. With some of our common birds, such
as the woodpeckers, the chickadee, and the swallows, both sexes take
part in nest-building.

It is a very pretty sight to witness a pair of wood thrushes building
their nest. Indeed, what is there about the wood thrush that is not
pleasing? He is a kind of visible embodied melody. Some birds are so
sharp and nervous and emphatic in their movements, as the common
snowbird or junco, the flashing of whose white tail quills expresses
the character of the bird. But all the ways of the wood thrush are
smooth and gentle, and suggest the melody of its song. It is the only
bird thief I love to see carrying off my cherries. It usually takes
only those dropped upon the ground by other birds, and with the red or
golden globe impaled upon its beak, its flight across the lawn is a
picture delightful to behold. One season a pair of them built a nest
in a near-by grove; morning after morning, for many mornings, I used
to see the two going to and from the nest, over my vineyard and
currant patch and pear orchard, in quest of, or bringing mater