It is difficult to understand why this bird should be called the Prairie Warbler, unless it is in order to distinguish it from those species that frequent less open places. A much more appropriate name is the Chestnut-backed Yellow Warbler. Though it is found in open places, this little bird would easily elude observation were it not for its peculiar notes, which Mr. Chapman describes as “a series of six or seven quickly repeated zees, the next to the last one the highest.” APRIL BIRDS AND FLOWERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI GULF COAST. Fickle April, with its sullen showers and teasing, wayward moods, its alternate days of warm sunshine and chilling rain, still leaves us who live north of the fortieth parallel in doubt whether summer really intends to come or not. Not so on the gulf coast; langorous breezes incline one to take life easy, the sun high overhead has the true June fervor, and, if further evidence is needed to convince us, ripening strawberries and blooming roses tell us that summer is here. Gardens filled with huge, flaming amaryllis, fragrant calycanthus and a thousand and one shrubs strange to the northern eye, greet us in every yard. In front of the houses and along the streets, their purple fragrance welcoming every newcomer, stand the China trees, the haunt of busy bees and their indefatigable pursuer the kingbird, or bee martin. In the lowlands a short distance back from the beach, the azaleas (Azalea nudiflora) are just dropping the last of their pink bloom, a bouquet thrown at the feet of all-conquering summer. Here and there in these jungles of yupon, bay, buttonwood, etc., appears a shrub clad in a filmy white mist. If this be the season for weddings, it must be that this is the bride that greets our eyes. A delicately beautiful bride she is, with arms that toss in the slightest breeze and now and then coyly shove aside the cloudy veil to take a farewell glimpse at the world she leaves. The natives do not take this view of this shrub (Chionanthus virginicus). They have dubbed it “grand-daddy-gray-beard.” Usually popular names have much to justify them, but in the instance just mentioned, and that of the brilliant red flower which gazes at us from the underbrush, they are suggestive of African superstition rather than Saxon sentiment. The melancholy local fancy sees in these flaming orbs only the power of evil, hence the name “Devil’s eye.” If I could be assured that the devil’s eye is really as beautiful and kind in its expression as its floral representative I would be willing, like Emerson, to call its possessor “the dear old devil.”