Identifier: birdsnature91901chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds Natural history
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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ts, worms,,snails and spiders, also eating, to a lim-ited extent, wild berries. The nest of the Rusty Blackbird islarge and substantially constructed. Itis generally placed in cone-bearing treesand is seldom more than ten feet fromthe ground. As a rule, trees growing inswampy and rather inaccessible placesare selected. The base of the nest isprincipally composed of sphagnum mossand earth, forming a firm, hard platformon which the nest proper is built. Thisis thickly covered on the outside withsmall tamarack and spruce twigs, mixedwith a few blades of .grass, pieces of fernand long green moss, especially at thebase. The inner cup is thickly and neat-ly lined with fine bright green grass.These blackbirds are not quarrelsome andare devoted parents, both sexes assistingin the care of the young, which are ableto leave the nest in about fifteen or six-teen days, Our illustration shows thefall and winter plumage of the male.During the breeding season the plumageis a irlossv bluish black. 204
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FROM COL. CHI. ACAD SCIENCES. 411 RUSTY BLACKBIRD OR GRACKLE.(Scolecophagus carolinus). - ; Lile-size COPYRIGHT 1901, BYA. W. MUMFORO, CHICAGOi WHAT EVOLUTION MEANS. 11 any person devoted his time to thecorrection of popular errors, there is noprobability that he would have any sparemoments for eating or sleeping. The se-rious aspect of the present condition ofpopular knowledge, however, is the ap-parent absence of desire upon the partof many young people to grasp the princi-ples of natural science. I am not exag-gerating when I say that there are plentyof fairly educated persons in every largecity who deny that man is an animal, andwho insist that a whale must be a fish, be-cause it lives in the sea. Everybody professes to be aware in asort of unconscious way that the theoryof Evolution was invented by Mr. Dar-win, and patented by Mr. Spencer, themost important points in the doctrine be-ing that all men are descended from mon-keys which had lost their tails, that thefittest survived,

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