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                           BIRDS AND NATURE.
                   ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY.
  Vol. IX.                    MARCH, 1901.                        No. 3




                               CONTENTS.


    SPRING.                                                           97
    ABOUT PARROTS.                                                    98
        How can our fancies help but go                              107
    POLLY.                                                           108
        Hark! ’tis the bluebird’s venturous strain                   109
    THE AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN. (_Pelecanus erythrorhynchos._)       110
    THE SANDPIPER.                                                   114
    A BIT OF BIRD GOSSIP.                                            115
    THE MARBLED MURRELET. (_Brachyramphus marmoratus._)              119
    BEFORE THE STORM.                                                119
    BOY-CHICKADEE.                                                   120
    THE STORY BIRD.                                                  121
    THE BEAR.                                                        122
    BIRD INCIDENTS.                                                  126
    SEA-MEWS IN WINTER TIME.                                         127
    SNAILS OF POND, RIVER AND BROOK.                                 128
    THE ORANGE. (_Citrus aurantium._)                                134
    THE MUSICAL SWAN. (_Cygnus musicus._)                            137
    PEPPER. (_Piper nigrum L._)                                      143
    MARCH.                                                           144




                                SPRING.


  Gentle Spring! in sunshine clad,
    Well dost thou thy power display!
  For Winter maketh the light heart sad,
    And thou, thou makest the sad heart gay.
  He sees thee, and calls to his gloomy train,
  The sleet, and the snow, and the wind, and the rain;
  And they shrink away, and they flee in fear,
    When thy merry step draws near.

  Winter giveth the fields and the trees, so old,
    Their beards of icicles and snow;
  And the rain, it raineth so fast and cold,
    We must cower over the embers low;
  And, snugly housed from the wind and weather,
  Mope like birds that are changing feather.
  But the storm retires, and the sky grows clear,
    When thy merry step draws near.

  Winter maketh the sun in the gloomy sky
    Wrap him around with a mantle of cloud;
  But, Heaven be praised, thy step is nigh;
    Thou tearest away the mournful shroud,
  And the earth looks bright, and Winter surly,
  Who has toiled for naught both late and early,
  Is banished afar by the new born year,
    When thy merry step draws near.
                                  —From the French of Charles D’Orleans,
                                             Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.




                             ABOUT PARROTS.


Naturalists place the parrot group at the head of bird creation. This is
done, not, of course, because parrots can talk, but because they
display, on the whole, a greater amount of intelligence, of cleverness
and adaptability to circumstances than other birds, including even their
cunning rivals, the ravens and the jackdaws.

It may well be asked what are the causes of the exceptionally high
intelligence in parrots. The answer which I suggest is that an intimate
connection exists throughout the animal world between mental development
and the power of grasping an object all round, so as to know exactly its
shape and its tactile properties. The possession of an effective
prehensile organ—a hand or its equivalent—seems to be the first great
requisite for the evolution of a high order of intellect. Man and the
monkeys, for example, have a pair of hands; and in their case one can
see at a glance how dependent is their intelligence upon these grasping
organs. All human arts base themselves ultimately upon the human hand;
and our nearest relatives, the anthropoid apes, approach humanity to
some extent by reason of their ever-active and busy little fingers. The
elephant, again, has his flexible trunk, which, as we have all heard
over and over again, is equally well adapted to pick up a pin or to
break the great boughs of tropical forest trees. The squirrel, also,
remarkable for his unusual intelligence when judged by a rodent
standard, uses his little paws as hands by which he can grasp a nut or
fruit all round, and so gain in his small mind a clear conception of its
true shape and properties. Throughout the animal kingdom generally,
indeed, this chain of causation makes itself everywhere felt; no high
intelligence without a highly-developed prehensile and grasping organ.

Perhaps the opossum is the best and most crucial instance that can be
found of the intimate connection which exists between touch and
intellect. The opossum is a marsupial; it belongs to the same group of
lowly-organized, antiquated and pouch-bearing animals as the kangaroo,
the