that originate in those high latitudes. It is a bird of Siberian and
Alaskan evergreens, and passes its life for the most part far beyond
the haunts of man. I have never seen the bird, but small bands of them
make excursions every winter down into our territory from British
America. Audubon, I believe, saw them in Maine; other observers have
seen them in Minnesota. It has the crest of the cedar-bird, the same
yellow border to its tail, but is marked with white on its wings, as if
a snowflake or two had adhered to it from the northern cedars and
pines. If you see about the evergreens in the coldest, snowiest weather
what appear to be a number of very large cherry-birds, observe them
well, for the chances are that visitants from the circumpolar regions
are before your door. It is a sign, also, that the frost legions of the
north are out in great force and carrying all before them.

Our cedar or cherry bird is the most silent bird we have. Our neutral-
tinted birds, like him, as a rule are our finest songsters; but he has
no song or call, uttering only a fine bead-like note on taking flight.
This note is the cedar-berry rendered back in sound. When the ox-heart
cherries, which he has only recently become acquainted with, have had
time to enlarge his pipe and warm his heart, I shall expect more music
from him. But in lieu of music, what a pretty compensation are those
minute, almost artificial-like, plumes of orange and vermilion that tip
the ends of his wing quills! Nature could not give him these and a song
too. She has given the hummingbird a jewel upon his throat, but no
song, save the hum of his wings.

Another bird that is occasionally borne to us on the crest of the cold
waves from the frozen zone, and that is repeated on a smaller scale in
a permanent resident, is the pine grosbeak; his _alter ego,_ reduced in
size, is the purple finch, which abounds in the higher latitudes of the