This phase of the subject is especially forced upon the attention of observers like myself, who search for nests, not mischievously, nor even with the laudable design of the scientific investigator, but solely as a means of promoting friendly acquaintance. We may not often witness the catastrophe itself; but as we go our daily rounds, now peeping under the bank or into the bush, and now climbing the tree, to see how some timid friend of ours is faring, we are only too certain to come upon first one home and then another which has been rifled and deserted since our last visit; till we begin to wonder why the defenseless and persecuted creatures do not turn pessimists outright, and relinquish forever their attempt to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Thinking of these things anew, now that I am reviewing my last spring's experiences, it is doubly gratifying to recall that I robbed only one nest during the entire season, and that not of malice, but by accident. It happened on this wise. A couple of solitary vireos had taken up their abode on a wooded hillside, where they, or others like them, had passed the previous summer, and one day I proposed to a friend that we make it our business to search out the nest. It proved to be not very difficult of discovery, though, when we put our eyes upon it, it appeared that we had walked directly by it several times, all in sight as it was, suspended from near the end of an oak-tree branch, perhaps nine feet from the ground. It contained five eggs, including one of the cow-bird; but just as my companion was about to let go the branch, which he had been holding down for my convenience, the end snapped, up went the nest, and out jumped four of the eggs. We were sorry, of course, but consoled ourselves with the destruction of the parasite, which otherwise would very likely have been the death of the vireos' own offspring. Meanwhile, the birds themselves took matters coolly. One of them fell to singing as soon as we withdrew, while the other flew to the nest, looked in, and without a word resumed her seat. After all, the accident might turn out to be nothing worse than a blessing in disguise, we said to each other. But before many days it became evident that the pair had given up the nest, and I carried it to a friend whom I knew to be in want of such a specimen for his cabinet.