Will anyone tell me _why_ this bird with olive back and speckled, thrush-like breast, is placed in the family _Mniotiltidæ_, or wood warblers, instead of with the _Turdidæ_, or thrushes? And why is the "water thrush" also classed with wood warblers, when his olive back and speckled breast make him seem almost a twin brother to the oven bird, while both are so unlike other members of the warbler family, and so much resemble the true thrushes? It was at Glen Haven, beside a mountain brook tumbling down into Skaneateles Lake that I had my first and only view of a water thrush. His clear song, repeatedly ringing out above the noisy music of the brook, kept luring me onward and upward over the rough banks, till at length I saw the little walker peering about among the stones for his food. Another bird closely resembling the thrushes and bearing the name, yet placed in _another family_, is the brown thrasher, or thrush. I look in my book for his classification. Family _Troglodytidæ_! I can scarcely believe my eyes! Can any one give me any earthly reason _why_ the ornithologists in their wisdom have seen fit to place this bird, with his reddish brown back, speckled breast and beautiful thrush-like song, in the same family with catbirds and wrens? Truly the mysteries of ornithology are past my comprehension. To return to our "teacher." My acquaintance with him has not yet advanced to the stage of finding him "at home" in his dwelling. As Neltje Blanchan says, "it is only by a happy accident" that one might "discover the little ball of earth raised above the ground, but concealed by leaves and twigs and resembling a Dutch oven, which gives the bird its name of oven-bird." Last summer at Pigeon Cove the warning cries of a mother-bird led me to suspect a nest, but I failed to find it. The brood had evidently left their home, for a sudden loud outcry from the mother-bird startled me as the little thrushes scurried out of the path from almost under my feet, while Madame Thrush fluttered about with a pretense of a broken wing to distract my attention. Her "trailing" was quite effective, for by the time I had turned my attention from her performance to the babies, they were quite out of sight. [Illustration: MUSKRAT. 1/3 Life-size. FROM COL. F. NUSSBAUMER & SON. A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO. COPYRIGHT 1900, BY NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.] THE MUSKRAT. (_Fiber Zibethicus._)