cause the American public feels awkward in employing such stilted terms of address, they are not often used. I remember that on one occasion a much respected Chief Executive, on my proposing, in accordance with diplomatic usage and precedent, to address him as "Your Excellency," begged me to substitute instead "Mr. President." The plain democratic "Mr." suits the democratic American taste much better than any other title, and is applied equally to the President of the Republic and to his coachman. Indeed the plain name John Smith, without even "Mr." not only gives no offense, where some higher title might be employed, but fits just as well, and is in fact often used. Even prominent and distinguished men do not resent nicknames; for example, the celebrated person whose name is so intimately connected with that delight of American children and grown-ups-the "Teddy Bear." This characteristic, like so many other American characteristics, is due not only to the love of equality and independence, but also to the dislike of any waste of time.

In countries where there are elaborate rules of etiquette concerning titles and forms of address, none but a Master of Ceremonies can hope to be thoroughly familiar with them, or to be able to address the distinguished people without withholding from them their due share of high-sounding titles and epithets; and, be it whispered, these same distinguished people, however broad-minded and magnanimous they may be in other respects, are sometimes extremely sensitive in this respect. And even after one has mastered all the rules and forms, and can appreciate and distinguish the various nice shades which exist between "His Serene Highness," "His Highness," "His Royal Highness," and "His Imperial Highness," or between "Rt. Rev." and "Most Rev.," one has yet to learn what titles a particular person has, and with what particular form of address he should be approached, an impossible task even for a Master of Ceremonies, unless he always has in his pocket a Burke's Peerage to tell him

who's who. What a waste of time, what an inconvenience, and what an unnecessary amount of irritation and annoyance all this causes. How much better to be able to address any person you meet simply as Mr. So-and-So, without unwittingly treading on somebody's sensitive corns! Americans have shown their common sense in doing away with titles altogether, an example which the sister Republic of China is following. An illustrious name loses nothing for having to stand by itself without prefixes and suffixes, handles and tails. Mr. Gladstone was no less himself for not prefixing his name with Earl, and the other titles to which it would have entitled him, as he I could have done had he not declined the so-called honor. Indeed, like the "Great Commoner," he, if that were possible, endeared himself the more to his countrymen because of his refusal. A name, which is great without resorting to the borrowed light of titles and honors, is greater than any possible suffix or affix which could be appended to it.

In conclusion, American manners are but an instance or result of the two predominant American characteristics to which I have already referred, and which reappear in so many other things American. A love of independence and of equality, early inculcated, and a keen abhorrence of waste of time, engendered by the conditions and circumstances of a new country, serve to explain practically all the manners and mannerisms of Americans. Even the familiar spectacle of men walking with their hands deep in their trousers' pockets, or sitting with their legs crossed, needs no other explanation, and to suggest that, because Americans have some habits which are peculiarly their own, they are either inferior or unmanly, would be to do them a grave injustice.

Few people are more warm-hearted, genial, and sociable than the Americans. I do not dwell on this, because it is quite unnecessary. The fact is perfectly familiar to all who have the slightest knowledge of them. Their kindness and

strength and ferocity. Mere size is little protection, for a goshawk will easily kill a rooster and even carry him off. That menacing shadow over the henyard which causes such a commotion on a still summer day in reality hovers over all the land of the little wild folk, by night as well as by day, and tragedy falls like the traditional bolt from the blue in open field and sedgy marsh and silent forest. On the twenty-ninth day of March, 1918, I found a strange record on my mountainside. The body of a small skunk dangled over a bent sapling, about four feet from the ground. Beneath were snow and mud, without a track in them. The skunk showed no mark of shot, nor had there been any hunters in that vicinity. He could hardly have climbed up and straddled a sapling to die a natural death; besides, there were blood-marks on his head, throat, and back. In all probability he had been killed by a great horned owl, that being one of the few creatures I know which have any fondness for skunks, and either dropped because the owl wasn't hungry or else placed on the limb preparatory to eating, the owl having been scared away before the meal could begin. At any rate, I could see no other explanation.

It was on the eighteenth day of March this same year that I first noticed the hawks so prominent in the air. It was also the day that bird song and spring warmth were first apparent. Walking along a highroad above a pine-filled valley, I heard a loud commotion in the trees, and suddenly a score of crows burst up above the pines like black fragments of an explosion. In their midst was a bird of about the same size, which speedily made off. Four crows went in pursuit, however. I was too far away to make out with any certainty what variety of hawk this bird was, and the light was in my face, in addition. It was probably a Cooper's hawk. But I could see the four crows fly over him, and dart down every few feet to take a peck at his head. Meanwhile the crows which remained behind kept up an incessant racket in the

pines. The hawk made no effort to fight back, nor did he even seem greatly annoyed. Without any attempt to dodge or change his line of flight, he gradually accelerated his speed, swung down wind, and disappeared, the four crows being left astern after about a mile. Just what he had done to annoy them I cannot say. He may have been hungry and attacked one. But it doesn't pay to attack a crow. E pluribus unum is their motto. Literally thousands of crows will gather in less than two hours to attack a great horned owl which has killed one of their number. As a rule, I doubt if the hawks and owls trouble the crows very much, even though their nests are so similarly placed in the tops of the forest trees.

I had hardly finished watching this little battle over the pines when, on looking upward, I saw a big red-tailed hawk (the large bird commonly and mistakenly called a "hen-hawk") sailing far aloft on almost motionless pinions. It is a beautiful flight, this of the red-tailed hawk, only exceeded in consummate ease, perhaps, by the turkey buzzard of the South which is undoubtedly the king of aëronauts. He was sailing in great circles, apparently aimless, and it seemed incredible that from such a height he could see his prey on the earth below, even prey as large as a rabbit, not to mention mice, which are the chief staple of his diet. Yet he was probably intently watching the earth beneath, as his great loops swung him northward (much like the connected capital O's we used to have to push across the page of our "writingbooks" at school), and sooner or later he would drop from his aërial pathway and swing aloft again with his quarry.

That same day I saw a third hawk, sitting quietly on top of a large log in a pasture within two hundred feet of the trolley track. The car was moving rapidly, so I had little time for observation, but it seemed to be a red-shouldered hawk, which is a trifle smaller than the red-tailed, but rather closely resembles it, especially in habits of flight. I could see, however, that the noisy passage

of the trolley did not disturb this bird in the least. He was facing in the opposite direction, with his head down, as if he were watching the ground. It may be there was some quarry beneath that log which he was waiting for. A cat at a mouse-hole can be no more patient than a hawk.

It is by no means true that all hawks are seriously destructive of desirable bird and animal life. The so-called "hen hawk" is a case in point. Because this hawk, and the red-shouldered hawk, also, have soared in their great, beautiful circles high above our clearings since the first settlers came, and because hawks do unquestionably raid poultry-yards and kill pigeons and wild game-birds, the most conspicuous raptores have had the burden of reproach heaped upon them. Yet actually the red-tailed, or "hen-hawk," does probably as much good as harm to the farmer and the community. In that monumental work, The Birds of New York, by Elon Howard Eaton, is a table of stomach contents from all the varieties of hawks and owls found in New York' State, compiled from many careful in vestigations. In only 10 per cent. of the red-tailed hawks was any trace of poultry, or game, and in only 9 per cent. any trace of other birds. The red-shouldered had a still smaller percentage. In both species 50 per cent. showed mice, and 45 per cent. of the red-shouldered showed insects. Doctor Eaton classes the redtailed hawk as "near the border-line of beneficent birds," however, and he puts the common marsh-hawk in the same rather doubtful class, because of its raids, on birds, along with the barred and snowy owls. He leaves in the unquestionably injurious class, as birds of prey which should be exterminated, only these: the goshawk, Cooper's hawk, sharpshinned hawk, duck-hawk, pigeon-hawk and great horned owl. They are the ones which do the real damage, both goshawks and great horned owls, for example, showing as high as 36 and 25 per cent., respectively, of poultry and game in the stomach contents examined, while the

pigeon-hawk showed 85 per cent. of other birds, and the duck-hawk 35 per cent. of poultry and game and 45 per cent. of other birds. In none was there any commensurate percentage of mice or insects to balance this destruction.

So far as my own state of Massachusetts is concerned, there is no doubt that the goshawk during the severe winter of 1917-18 was the most serious menace to all our small wild game, next to the weather, and even a serious menace to our domestic fowls. Not only did this vicious, cruel, and incredibly swift and powerful bird, supposedly an inhabitant of the North, visit regions where hitherto he was comparatively unknown in any such numbers, but he seemed to be displaying a tendency to remain, at least for all the winter months. It may be he will yet have to be reckoned as our worst winged enemy. I collected that winter a few records of his exploits from my own immediate neighborhood, which can be duplicated, probably over most of New England and New York. The total amount of his destruction was certainly huge.

For example, a single goshawk near the city of Pittsfield wantonly killed seventeen pigeons, carrying away only one of them to eat. A goshawk in Sheffield was seen by a farmer to swoop upon a pheasant in a field and kill it. Another farmer lost several hens, and on more than one occasion was close by when the raid was made, but could never get his gun up quick enough to bag the hawk. Finally this hawk killed and managed to carry off a full-grown Plymouth Rock rooster. As the goshawk stands but twenty-one to twenty-two inches high, and weighs considerably less than the fattened fowl, you can gather some idea of its power. There were numerous other records of domestic fowl and pigeon killing, and tales by the hunters of pheasants, grouse, and even rabbits slaughtered by this pirate of the air. It is fortunate for us that the bird does not yet breed so far south as this. Though a few of our woodsmen maintained that the following spring the

goshawks were showing signs of breeding hereabouts, there was no real evidence obtainable that they ever did so.

Several specimens were shot that winter, one or two by irate farmers who watched the hen-yard, gun in hand, from a cover. The goshawk is certainly a savage-looking specimen, when properly mounted, the adult being slate-blue and gray, with black on the head, and having the longish body of the Cooper hawk, with more muscular power in it, fierce talons and beak, and a flashing eye. Every line of him looks cruel-and is cruel. Like the mink and weasel, he butchers for the sheer love of killing, even when he isn't hungry. He and the duckhawk are the Prussians of the bird kingdom.

The duck-hawk, fortunately, is rather rare, or at least it is rare in settled communities, because it builds its nest, or its apology for a nest, on the ledges of rock precipices (like the golden eagle), and consequently more or less requires a mountain country to breathe in. The duck-hawk (which is seventeen inches long, considerably smaller than the "henhawk" or goshawk) belongs to the falcon family-it is the Falco peregrinus anatum, and practically identical with the European peregrine falcon of the romantic days of falconry, those heroic days of old which we of the modern high-power rifle and soft-nosed expanding bullet think so cruel and bloody. The falcons differ from the hawks somewhat in their bills and talons, which are even better adapted for tearing and seizing prey, and in the relatively greater length and pointed character of their wings. The peregrine falcon, or duck-hawk, is undoubtedly a splendid bird if you judge him solely by strength and speed and cunning in flight. He most often seizes his prey on the wing, and now that water-fowl are scarce he takes about any birds he encounters, dropping upon them with a suddenness that leaves them no chance for escape.

The duck-hawks often nest year after year in the same place, apparently either the same birds or young of the parent

birds returning to the familiar cliff. On Sugar Loaf, a curious formation near Deerfield, Massachusetts, and also on the precipitous ledges of Monument Mountain in Stockbridge (the mountain celebrated by Bryant in a poem), there have been duck-hawks' nests for over a generation. The nesting-place on Monument can only be reached, as a rule, with an Alpine rope, and since the eggs are laid before the 1st of May, while the cliff is still wet, the egg-hunter takes his life in his hands. Last year, for the first time, I did not see the birds about the mountains at all, and three ascents of the cliff with a rope disclosed nothing except a partridge's nest on a dry, mossy shelf. My observation was not continuous nor thorough enough to say definitely that they were not there, but apparently this historic pair of birds have met their end at last. I cannot help hoping so, for they took, I am sure, a tremendous toll of bird life, including, I know, many meadow-larks and flickers. Their hunting range, too, is great. I cannot say how great, but once or twice when I was on the mountain summit I have seen one of them coming from over the mountain on the far side of the valley, winging much like a pigeon, from regions at least fifteen miles away. If they hunt over a circle of only thirty miles in diameter (and probably it is very much more) the territory a pair can cover is considerable. The Cooper and sharp-shinned hawks (smallish hawks, of fifteen to eighteen and ten to twelve inches, respectively) can be told apart because the Cooper has a rounded tail, the sharp-shinned a square tail. Both may be told from the small falcons-i. e., the so-called sparrow and pigeon hawks, because the falcons have long, pointed wings, the hawks short, rounded ones. Both Cooper and sharp-shinned hawks breed in the latitude of New England and New York, and even as far south as Florida. Both build nests in forest trees, the sharp-shinned selecting almost always evergreens, the Cooper taking an old crow's nest when convenient. They are true hawks in habit, coursing low through