These habits of the hermit-thrush mark the dwarf-hermit in southern California. We see it in the orange-groves after irrigation or during a wet winter. Plenty of mulching in the orchards invites the dwarf (where it is a hermit like its relative), and we find it scratching away in the litter, overturning frail little toadstool huts and umbrellas, and exchanging greetings with its neighbor, the varied thrush, under the next tree. Here in the cañons, where the brooks turn right side up for one brief season in the long, dry year, we see the little olive-brown bird with its speckled breast. Its sight and hearing are keen, so that it detects the whereabouts of the stone-flies, lingering among the moist rocks until they come out for a drink or a bath, when--that is the last of them. The dwarf brown beauty, which, of course, must have victuals by hook or crook, never breaking a single law in either case, loves the watery haunts of the dragon-flies. It passes by the pupa-skin drying on its leaf-stalk just as it was outgrown, with perchance a glance at the reflection in the water; but the cunning bird neglects not to take in the pupa itself, making its own breakfast on undeveloped mosquitoes in the water's edge. All winter long about our home lives the dwarf hermit, eating crumbs at the garden table and looking for belated raspberries on the ever-green canes. Early, before the sun is up, the bird runs along under our windows, where the myrtle covers the tracks of night insects, and rings its tinkling notes. These resemble the familiar bell-notes that belong to the wood-thrush, cousin of the hermit and the dwarf hermit. Not so numerous as its relatives, the wood-thrush is seen only in Eastern North America. It nests in trees or bushes, packing wet, decaying leaves and wood fiber into a paste, which dries and resembles the mud nest of the robin. It, too, gets its food in the litter of leaves and wet places, choosing fens and cranberry bogs in the pastures. All the thrushes delight in berries, and any berry-patch, wild or cultivated, is the bird's own patch of ground. The sadder the day the sweeter the song of the wood-thrush. Nature-lovers who stroll into the thickest of the woods of a cloudy day on purpose to make the acquaintance of the thrush will find "The heart unlocks its springs Wheresoe'er he singeth." The notes of all the thrushes are singularly sweet, and may be recognized by their low, tinkling, bell-like tones. At the funeral of Cock Robin, who did not survive his wedding-day in the legend, it was the thrush who sang a psalm, and he was well qualified, "as he sat in a bush," if such a thing were possible, no doubt bringing tears to his feathered audience. The "throstle with his note so true" in the garden of Bottom, the fairy in "Midsummer Night's Dream," was the thrush of Shakespeare's own country. No fairy's garden is complete without this sweet singer described so truly by Emily Tolman.