ion, which it seemed I
should never get accustomed to, and several times I was obliged to turn
back for overshoes before I could pay my usual call. A lawn asoak is a
curious sight, and always reminds me of Lanier's verses,

"A thousand rivulets run
'Twixt the roots of the soil; the blades of the marsh grass stir;
... and the currents cease to run,
And the sea and the marsh are one."

The morning the lazulis were ten days old, before I came out of the
house, that happened which so often puts an end to a study of bird
life,--the nest was torn out of place and destroyed, and the little
family had disappeared. The particulars will never be known. Whether a
nest-robbing boy or a hungry cat was the transgressor, and whether the
nestlings were carried off or eaten, or had happily escaped, who can
tell? I could only judge by the conduct of the birds themselves, and as
they did not appear disturbed, and continued to carry food, it is to be
presumed that part, if not all, of the brood was saved from the wreck of
their home.

Happily, to console me in my sorrow for this catastrophe, the lazuli was
not the only bird to be seen on the lawn, though his was the only nest.
I had for some time been greatly interested in the daily visits of a
humming-bird, a little dame in green and white, who had taken possession
of a honeysuckle vine beside the door, claiming the whole as her own,
and driving away, with squeaky but fierce cries, any other of her race
who ventured to sip from the coral cups so profusely offered.

The season for humming-birds opened with the locust blossoms next door,
which were for days a mass of blooms and buzzings, of birds and bees.
But when the fragrant flowers began to fall and the ground was white
with them, one bird settled herself on our honeysuckle, and there took
her daily meals for a month. Being not six feet from where I sat for
hours every day, I had the first good opportunity of my life to learn
the ways of one of these queer little creatures in feathers.

After long searching and much overhauling of the books, I made her out
to be the female broad-tailed humming-bird, who is somewhat larger than
the familiar ruby-throat of the East. Her mate, if she had one, never
came to the vine; but whether she drove him away and discouraged him, or
whether he had an independent source of supply, I never knew. She was
the only one whose acquaintance I made, and in a month'