That pretty fashion of a contrast in linings is not confined to the grosbeak. The flicker, too, has his wings delicately lined with--a scrap of sunset sky. I do not know whether he found his material there or lower down in a marsh of marigolds; but when he flies over your head into the elm tree and plies his trade, you will see that he is fitly named, golden-winged woodpecker. He makes no fuss over his spring clothes. A fresh red tie, which, oddly enough, he wears on the back of his neck, a retinting of his bright lining, a new gloss on his spotted vest and striped coat, and his toilet is made. Madame Flicker is so like her spouse that you would be puzzled to tell them apart, but for his black mustache. The flicker fashion of dressing alike may come from advanced notions of equality; whatever its source, the purple finch is of another mind. He sacrifices much, almost his own identity, to love of variety; and yet he is never purple. His name simply perpetuates a blunder for which no excuse can be offered. Pokeberry is his prevailing hue, but so variously is it intermingled with brown at different times and seasons and ages, that scarcely two finches look alike. The mother-bird wears the protective colors of the sparrow, while young males seem to be of doubtful mind which parent to copy; and so a purple finch family presents diversity of attire puzzling to a novice. But why, pray, should a bird family wear a uniform, as if a charity school or a foundling hospital? The gay little warblers are not institutional to that degree. An example of their originality is redstart--another misnamed bird. He wears the colors of Princeton College, or rather, the college wears his; and a lordly male privilege it is, in both cases. His mate contents herself with pale yellow and gray, while the young male waits three years before putting on his father's coat. The first year he wears his mother's dress; the second, a motley betwixt and between; the third, he is a tree "_candelita_," or little torch, lighting up his winter home in a Cuban forest, and bringing Spanish fashions to New England with the May blossoms. When dame nature in the spring For her annual opening Has her doors and windows washed by April showers; When the sun has turned the key, And the loosened buds are free To come out and pile the shelving rocks with flowers; When the maple wreathes her head With a posy-garland red, And the grass-blade sticks a feather in his cap; When the tassels trim the birch, And the oak-tree in the lurch Hurries up to get some fringes for his wrap; When the willow's yellow sheen And the meadow's emerald green Are the fashionable colors of the day; When the bank its pledges old Pays in dandelion gold, And horse-chestnut folds its baby hands to pray--