their continual social chatter, including their quarrels, makes such a continuous noise that the ordinary bird, which is generally of rather quiet disposition, is too much annoyed by the unending nuisance to find the neighborhood at all to his taste. Where a large number of sparrows have gathered together the conditions are such as would give a robin or a bluebird nervous prostration, and his only recourse is to depart to a neighborhood where there is more peace and quiet. But our English sparrow is not only better fitted for the struggle than the robins and bluebirds, the orioles and the wrens. He has one important advantage over even his own sparrow cousins. The males are handsome--much more so than the females or than their sparrow cousins in general. In the song sparrow, field sparrow, chipping sparrow, and the fox sparrow the male and female are very nearly alike in color. It often becomes necessary for the bird-man to examine the internal organs of the bird he is stuffing before he can certainly decide its sex. But there is no difficulty whatever in telling the male from the female of the English sparrow. The male is far the more ornate bird. His back is striped with a richer brown; his head has two splendid dashes of chestnut over the eyes; his throat and breast are splashed with red and lustrous black; his bill is a clear fine black. Altogether the bird is strikingly colored for a sparrow, and this characteristic is the more remarkable when we see how quiet and somber is his more modest mate. This brilliancy of male plumage in the presence of the somber color of his mate would seem to indicate that the English sparrow is eye-minded rather than ear-minded. It is true among human beings that most of them are eye-minded. That is to say, they notice things with their eyes chiefly. Memories they have are memories of things seen; recollections of their friends bring up the appearance of their friends. Their language is full of metaphors which imply form and shape. But occasionally we come across an ear-minded person. He remembers voices quite as well as he remembers faces. To him music is an unending delight, and painting and sculpture fall into a distinctly secondary place. This is ear-mindedness. Now, most of the sparrows seem to be ear-minded, at least as far as their recognition of their mates are concerned. In this group beauty of song is developed many times oftener than is especial ornateness of plumage. The bird-lover who is himself keen of ear is never tired of listening, when in the field, for the two low notes with which the vesper sparrow introduces a song, the rest of which is not at all unlike the one of his song-sparrow cousin. The field sparrow begins more like the song sparrow, but ends with an often repeated note, which not a little resembles in general character the somewhat more monotonous song of the grasshopper sparrow or of the chippy. In comparison with these