From my window, on the side of Cameron Hill, I heard daily the singing of an orchard oriole--another fine and neighborly bird--and a golden warbler, with sometimes the _fidgety_, _fidgety_ of a Maryland yellow-throat. What could _he_ be fussing about in so unlikely a quarter? An adjoining yard presented the unnatural spectacle--unnatural, but, I am sorry to say, not unprecedented--of a bird-house occupied in partnership by purple martins and English sparrows. They had finished their quarrels, if they had ever had any,--which can hardly be open to doubt, both native and foreigner being constitutionally belligerent,--and frequently sat side by side upon the ridge-pole, like the best of friends. The oftener I saw them there, the more indignant I became at the martins' un-American behavior. Such a disgraceful surrender of the Monroe Doctrine was too much even for a man of peace. I have never called myself a Jingo, but for once it would have done me good to see the lion's tail twisted. With the exception of a few pairs of rough-wings on Missionary Ridge, the martins seemed to be the only swallows in the country at that time of the year; and though _Progne subis_, in spite of an occasional excess of good nature, is a most noble bird, it was impossible not to feel that by itself it constituted but a meagre representation of an entire family. Swallows are none too numerous in Massachusetts, in these days, and are pretty certainly growing fewer and fewer, what with the prevalence of the box-monopolizing European sparrow, and the passing of the big, old-fashioned, widely ventilated barn; for there is no member of the family, not even the sand martin, whose distribution does not depend in great degree upon human agency. Even yet, however, if a Massachusetts man will make a circuit of a few miles, he will usually meet with tree swallows, barn swallows, cliff swallows, sand martins, and purple martins. In other words, he need not go far to find all the species of eastern North America, with the single exception of the least attractive of the six; that is to say, the rough-wing. As compared with the people of eastern Tennessee, then, we are still pretty well favored. It is worth while to travel now and then, if only to find ourselves better off at home.