to continue so long on the wing.

What was this wonderful bird? It was Townsend's solitaire (_Myadestes
townsendii_)--a bird which is peculiar to the West, especially to the
Rocky Mountains, and which belongs to the same family as the thrushes
and bluebirds. No literature in my possession contains any reference to
this bird's astonishing aerial flight and song, and I cannot help
wondering whether other bird-students have witnessed the interesting
exploit.

Subsequently I found a pair of solitaires on the plains near Arvada. The
male was a powerful singer. Many of his outbursts were worthy of the
mocking-bird, to some of whose runs they bore a close resemblance. He
sang almost incessantly during the half day I spent in the neighborhood,
my presence seeming to inspire him to the most prodigious lyrical
efforts of which he was master. Sometimes he would sit on the top of a
bush or a fence-post, but his favorite perches were several ridges of
sand and gravel. His flight was the picture of grace, and he had a habit
of lifting his wings, now one, now the other, and often both, after the
manner of the mocking-bird on a chimney-top. He and his mate did not
utter a chirp, but made a great to-do by singing, and finally I
discovered that all the fuss was not about a nest, but about a hulking
youngster that had outgrown his kilts and looked very like a brown
thrasher. Neither of this second pair of solitaires performed any
evolutions in the upper air; nor did another pair that I found far up a
snow-clad mountain near Breckenridge, on the other side of the
Continental Divide.

The scientific status of this unique bird is interesting. He is a
species of the genus _Myadestes_, which belongs to the family _Turdidae_,
including the thrushes, stone-chats, and bluebirds, as well as the
solitaires. He is therefore not a thrush, but is closely related to the
genus _Turdus_, occupying the same relative position in the avi-faunal
system. According to Doctor Coues the genus includes about twenty
species, only one of which--the one just described--is native to the
United States, the rest being found in the West Indies and Central and
South America. Formerly the solitaires comprised a subfamily among the
chatterers, but a later and more scientific classification places
them in a genus under the head of _Turdidae_.

[Illustration: PLATE VIII

BROWN-CAPPED LEUCOSTICTE--_Leucosticte australis_
(Lower figure, male; upper, female)]

The rang