tree they much frequented. Next to that, and
overshadowed by it, was, as I now discovered, a thorny tree, "honey
locust" it is called. Ominous proximity! I resolved to investigate.
Perhaps I should find the birds' place of storage. I crossed the track
and went to the tree. What a structure it was! A mere framework for
thorns, and a finer array of them it would be hard to find, from the
tiny affair an inch in length, suitable to hold a small grasshopper, to
foot-long spikes, big enough to impale a crow. Not only was every branch
and every twig bristling with them, but so charged was the whole tree
with the "feeling" of thorns, that it actually sent out great clumps of
them from the bare trunk, where there was not a shadow of excuse for
being. They grew in a confused mass, so that at first I thought there
had been a hole which some person had stopped by crowding it full of
those vegetable needles, at all angles, and of all sizes up to the
largest. On one side alone of the trunk, not more than five feet high,
were eight of these eruptions of thorns. Could the most bloodthirsty
shrike desire a more commodious larder?

I looked carefully, dreading to see evidence of their use in the
traditional way. Outside there, on the telegraph wire, sat one of the
birds, very much at home; it was the height of the season, and the
country was swarming with young birds. Now, if ever, they should lay up
for the future, and prove their right to the name, or kill to amuse
themselves, if that were their object. But the closest scrutiny failed
to reveal one thorn that was, or, so far as I could see, ever had been,
used for any purpose whatever. There was not another spiny tree in the
vicinity, and I came away relieved.

One more interview I was happy enough to have with my little gray
friends. Coming leisurely along on my way home from the glen one noon, I
saw two of them sitting on the wire of a fence beside the road. I had
never been so near them, and stopped instantly to have a close look, and
perhaps settle the question whether the black band on the side of the
head ended at the beak, or crossed over the forehead and met its fellow.
I found, at this short range, that the light part of the plumage was
covered with fine but decided wavy bars, which gave it an exquisite
look, and proved the bird to be the great northern, rather than the
loggerhead shrike (I couldn't bear to have my bright beauty called a
loggerhead).

Very gradually I drew