My window overlooked a long stretch of cattle pastures and meadows still uncut, bounded on one side by woods, and in the middle of this valley unvisited by man, the crows of the neighborhood established a training school for their youngsters. A good glass let me in as unsuspected audience, and I had views of many interesting family scenes, supposed by the wary parents to be visible only to the cows stolidly feeding on the hillside. In this way I had all the fun and none of the trouble of the training business. It is astonishing how completely the manner of the adult crow is lacking in his young offspring, whose only external difference is the want of a tail. Must we then conclude that the dignity of a bird depends upon the length of his tail? We are accustomed to regard the crow as a grave and solemn personage with a serious rôle in life; and indeed life is such a constant warfare to him that I cannot see how he finds any enjoyment in it. Lowell says of him at one period:-- "The crow is very comical as a lover, and to hear him try to soften his croak to the proper Saint Preux standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson." If he is droll as a lover, he is much more entertaining as an infant. The first I knew of the new use of the pasture, I heard one morning a strange cry. It was loud and persistent, and sounded marvelously like "Ma-a! Ma-a!" Mingled with it I heard the vigorous cries of crows. I looked over into the pasture, and there I first saw the crow baby, nearly as big and black as his mamma, but with no tail to speak of. He sat--not stood--on the rail fence, bawling at the top of his hoarse baby-voice, "Ma! Ma! Ma!" and as he grew impatient he uttered it faster and faster and louder and louder, drawing in his breath between the cries, and making it more like "Wah! Wah!" Whenever mamma flew over he followed her movement with his eyes, turning his head, and showing an eager, almost painful interest, till some one took pity on him and fed him. As he saw food approaching his voice ran up several tones higher, in laughable imitation of a human baby cry. This note is of course the promise of a "caw," but the _a_ is flattened to the sound of _a_ in bar, which makes it a ludicrous caricature of our own first utterances.