nothing else on
earth, is a sort of "retching" note followed by several sputtering
utterances, hard to describe, but not unpleasant to hear, perhaps
because it suggests the meadow under the warm sun of June, with
bobolinks soaring and singing, and a populous colony beneath the long
grass. Now night was coming on, and the larks were passing from the
pasture, where they seemed to spend most of the day, some with song and
some with sputter, over the road, to drop into the grass and be seen no
more;

"While through the blue of the sky the swallows, flitting and flinging,
Sent their slender twitterings down from a thousand throats."

Sometimes, on that lonely road, which I passed over several times a day,
I was treated to a fairy-like sight. It was when a recent shower had
left little puddles in the clay road, and the eave swallows from a house
across the meadow came down to procure material for their adobe
structures. Most daintily they alighted on their tiny feet around the
edge, holding up their tails like wrens, lest they should soil a feather
of their plumage, and raising both wings over their backs like
butterflies, fluttering them all the time, as if to keep their balance
and partly hold them up from the ground,--a lovely sight which I enjoyed
several times.

Under the eaves of the distant house, where the nests of these birds
were placed, and which I visited later, were evidences of tragedies. The
whole length of the cornice on the back side of the house showed marks
of many nests, and there were left at that time but four, two close
together at each end of the line. I cannot say positively that the nests
had fallen while in use, but in another place, a mile away, I know of a
long row having fallen, with young in, every one of whom was killed.
Where was the "instinct" of the birds whose hopes thus perished? And was
the trouble with their material or with their situation? I noticed this:
that the nests had absolutely nothing to rest on, not even a projecting
board. They were plastered against a perfectly plain painted board.

[Sidenote: _THE PH[OE]BE'S TALK._]

Another bird whom I caught in a new role, apparently giving a lesson in
food-hunting to a youngster, was a ph[oe]be. Hearing a new and strange
cry, mingled with tones of a voice familiar to me, I looked up, and
discovered a young and an old ph[oe]be. The elder kept up a running
series of remarks in the tone peculiar to the species, while the infant
a