show many curious incidents. A friend of mine opened his box-stove one
fall to kindle a fire in it, when he beheld in the black interior the
desiccated forms of two bluebirds. The birds had probably taken refuge
in the chimney during some cold spring storm, and had come down the
pipe to the stove, from whence they were unable to ascend.
A peculiarly touching little incident of bird life occurred to a caged
female canary. Though unmated, it laid some eggs, and the happy bird
was so carried away by her feelings that she would offer food to the
eggs, and chatter and twitter, trying, as it seemed, to encourage them
to eat! The incident is hardly tragic, neither is it comic.

Certain birds nest in the vicinity of our houses and outbuildings,
or even in and upon them, for protection from their enemies, but they
often thus expose themselves to a plague of the most deadly character.

I refer to the vermin with which their nests often swarm, and which
kill the young before they are fledged. In a state of nature this
probably never happens; at least I have never seen or heard of it
happening to nests placed in trees or under rocks. It is the curse
of civilization falling upon the birds which come too near man.
The vermin, or the germ of the vermin, is probably conveyed to the nest
in hen's feathers, or in straws and hairs picked up about the barn or
hen-house. A robin's nest upon your porch or in your summer-house will
occasionally become an intolerable nuisance from the swarms upon swarms
of minute vermin with which it is filled. The parent birds stem the
tide as long as they can, but are often compelled to leave the young to
their terrible fate.

One season a phoebe-bird built on a projecting stone under the eaves of
the house, and all appeared to go well till the young were nearly