d, and I gave up, baffled. I began to doubt the
ability of the parent birds themselves to find it, and so secreted
myself and watched. After much delay, the male bird appeared with food
in his beak, and, satisfying himself that the coast was clear, dropped
into the grass which I had trodden down in my search. Fastening my eye
upon a particular meadow-lily, I walked straight to the spot, bent down,
and gazed long and intently into the grass. Finally my eye separated the
nest and its young from its surroundings. My foot had barely missed them
in my search, but by how much they had escaped my eye I could not tell.
Probably not by distance at all, but simply by unrecognition. They were
virtually invisible. The dark gray and yellowish-brown dry grass and
stubble of the meadow-bottom were exactly copied in the color of the
half-fledged young. More than that, they hugged the nest so closely and
formed such a compact mass, that though there were five of them, they
preserved the unit of expression,--no single head or form was defined;
they were one, and that one was without shape or color, and not
separable, except by closest scrutiny, from the one of the
meadow-bottom. That nest prospered, as bobolinks' nests doubtless
generally do; for, notwithstanding the enormous slaughter of the birds
by Southern sportsmen during their fall migrations, the bobolink appears
to hold its own, and its music does not diminish in our Northern
meadows.

THE BOBOLINK

Daisies, clover, buttercup,
Redtop, trefoil, meadowsweet,
Ecstatic pinions, soaring up,
Then gliding down to grassy seat.

Sunshine, laughter, mad desires,
May day, June day, lucid skies,
All reckless moods that love inspires--
The gladdest bird that sings and flies.

Meadows, orchards, bending sprays,
Rushes, lilies, billowy wheat,
Song and frolic fill his days,
A feathered rondeau all complete.

Pink bloom, gold bloom, fleabane white,
Dewdrop, raindrop, cooling shade,
Bubbling throat and hovering flight,
And jocund heart as e'er was made.

THE WOOD THRUSH

The wood thrush is the handsomest species of the thrush family. In grace
and elegance of manner he has no equal. Such a gentle, high-bred air,
and such inimitable ease and composure in his flight and movement! He is
a poet in very word and deed. His carriage is music to the eye. His
performance of the commonest act, as catching