size could pass, and showed so
great an inclination to go through a hole in the open-work fire-board
that I hastily covered it up. After a while he tested the matting and
carefully investigated, by light taps of his bill, each separate nail.
His step was heavy, and he did not hop, but ran around with a droll
little patter of the feet, like a child's footsteps.

Having exhausted the novelty of the floor, he turned his eyes upward,
perhaps noticing that the other birds were higher in the room, where
they had taken refuge when he made his sudden and somewhat alarming
appearance among them. He did not try to fly, but he was not without
resources; he could jump, and no one could outdo him in climbing, or in
holding on. After a moment's apparent consideration of the means at his
command, he ran to the corner and mounted a trunk by springing up
halfway, holding on a moment in some mysterious manner, and then by a
second jump landing on top. From that point it was easy to reach the
bird's table, and there was a ladder placed for the benefit of another
that could not fly. This ladder he at once pounced upon, and used as if
he had practiced on one all his life.

I shut the cage-door at the upper end to keep him out of his neighbor's
house, while the owner, an American wood-thrush, stood upon the roof,
looking ruefully at this appropriation of his private property. Upon
reaching the closed door the traveler jumped across to another cage
nearly a foot away. This was a small affair occupied by an English
goldfinch, who was then at home and not pleased by the call, as he at
once made known. Golden-wing, however, perhaps with the idea of
returning past insults from the saucy little finch, jerked himself all
around the cage, inserting his long bill as though trying to reach
something inside.

Having wearied of annoying the enemy, he sprang back to the ladder,
descended by the table and trunk to the floor as he had gone up, without
a moment's hesitation as to the way, which proved him to possess unusual
intelligence. He did not take the trouble to climb down, but put his two
feet together and jumped heavily like a child, a very odd movement for a
bird. It was his constant habit in the cage to jump from the perch to
the floor, and from one that was two inches above the tray he often
stepped down backwards, which I never before saw a bird do.

When after three hours of exploration he returned to his home, the door
was closed and the