Considerable time elapsed after the passage of the "Act to Provide a National Currency" before the first national bank under its provisions was organized. The officers of the State banks, who had generally managed them with safety to the public and credit to themselves, were naturally averse to any change and unwilling to concede that any better system could be devised, especially by a Secretary who, although he had established his reputation as a great financier, had no experience in the practical business of banking. The bank presidents of the principal cities, in making previous loans to the Government, had become accustomed to act together, and there was some evidence of an organized resistance on their part to the national-bank act. They did not believe it could be set in motion without their cooperation.

In this opinion they were mistaken. The first impulse was given to the new system by a New Yorker who was quite outside their powerful financial circle. The "First National Bank" was organized by Mr. John Thompson. It had a moderate capital and no business except such as itself created. It was by the act entitled to become one of the depositories of the Treasury moneys, and to other privileges having a pecuniary value, from which the State banks were excluded. These advantages immediately demonstrated that banking under the national act might be made very profitable, and resistance to it on the ground of prejudice could not long be maintained when it involved a pecuniary loss. The alternative was presented to the bank officers of banking under the old system at a loss or under the new at a profit. Their prejudices began to give way, and as soon as

one or two of the State banks had decided to make the change, all the others were so ready to follow that it was simply a question which could get into the national system first. In a few weeks opposition to it from the old banks had disappeared.

The wise and conservative administration of the act by Mr. McCulloch, the first Comptroller of the Currency, was most efficient in removing all objections of the State-bank officers; and the readiness with which Secretary Chase accepted suggestions for amendments made friends of many who would otherwise have been its enemies. It was at first intended that the national banks should be numbered consecutively in order of their organization, and that the former names of the State banks should be wholly suppressed. The suggestion that these banks should be permitted to retain the old and honorable titles was made by Mr. Patterson, one of the oldest and most experienced bank presidents of Philadelphia. The value of this suggestion was immediately recognized by the Secretary and the Comptroller, and it was adopted. Its effect was equivalent to a retention by the old banks of the "trade-marks" of their business. Thus, for example, the "Chemical Bank,” which would have become possibly the "Nine hundred and seventh National Bank," under Mr. Patterson's suggestion became the "Chemical National Bank." The change was so slight that it preserved whatever of advantage was associated with an old and honorable name. The influence of this change was very great; in fact, it seemed to remove the last prejudice against. the national system, which, tested by an experience of twenty-five years, has proved to be the best, safest, and most satisfactory known to the history of banking.

CHAPTER XII.

SOME NOTES ABOUT BIRDS—A LESSON IN EN

GINEERING.

I HOPE no reader will turn away contemptuously from this chapter because he assumes that the subject is unworthy of men who have to deal with the serious concerns of life. I have never had much time to throw away, but I have spent a good many days with our common birds, and a much larger number with men, infinitely less to my profit and pleasure.

If he hopes to gain the confidence of the public, no writer of political literature should fail to acquaint himself with the elements of natural history. I have in mind a very delightful author, eminent as a poet, a statesman, a diplomatist, and a historian, yet because of his gross perversion of ornithological facts I cannot read anything that he has written with any pleasure or give credit to facts upon his unconfirmed evidence. One who describes humming-birds perishing in a snow-storm, the robins pairing in midwinter, the crows nesting in the evergreens around his garden, will never gain the confidence of the naturalist. When he affirms that the blue-jays unravelled an old carpet for the materials for their nest built in his fruit-trees, and that the parent birds looked on with silent admiration while he amputated the limb of one of their young, broken by being entangled in one of the strings woven into their nest, he taxes our

credulity quite as heavily as old Sir John Maundeville when he declares that "the Ravenes and Crowes, everyche of hem bringethe in here bekes a braunche of olive, of the whiche the monkes maken gret plentee of Oyle to feed the lampes in the Chirche of Seynte Kateryne," a fact which he solemnly declares is "the myracle of God and a gret marvaylle." The humming-bird never comes to us until the honeysuckle is in flower, the male robin precedes the female by some weeks in its spring migration, and every tyro knows that in New England the corvidæ are the most secretive of birds in their nesting and incubation. The nest of the common crow, always in the thick boughs of the lofty pine or hemlock, is seldom found until it is betrayed by the hoarse cawing of the young; the egg of that very common bird, the Canada jay, was unknown to science until 1859, and no nest of a New England bird is more difficult of discovery than that of the blue-jay. It is to be found only in some ravine in the depths of the forest where the thick tops of the evergreens effectually screen it from human observation. When found, like all the nests of the genus, it is formed exclusively of dried twigs, with no spear of grass or anything but woody roots and twigs in its construction. No improbability could surpass the story of the young jay losing its leg by becoming entangled in a string, except that of the nest being made from the ravellings of an old carpet hanging in a flower-garden!

The blue-jay is one of those birds that change their habits with their locality. In New England they are never seen in flocks and seldom more than a pair are seen together. In the Southern States, where they winter, they collect in flocks, and their watch

fulness for every grain of rice or corn makes them the pest of the plantation. Those which remain there do not lose their attachment for human society, and are said to nest and rear their young near the houses of the planters.

Do the birds reason? Do they know when it is necessary to protect themselves and their young against man and the lower animals and when it is not? I will not attempt a comprehensive answer to these questions. I will state some facts which will be interesting, and I know that they are credible.

The

The crows are a knowing family. They comprise the ravens, the magpies, the common crows, and the jays. The raven lives in the depths of the forest or on the shores of our solitary lakes in the silent wilderness. Why men pursue him to death it is bootless to inquire. Under no circumstances does he ever cultivate or injure human society. crow is a very common bird and is, as his wants demand, a pest and a blessing. In the winter of 1862, when in the vicinity of Washington the unacclimated horses and cattle died by thousands, I used to welcome the mighty army of black-winged scavengers that devoured the carrion and protected us against epidemics. But every New England farmer's boy knows what a pest they are to the newly planted corn-fields and has had some opportunity to study their predatory habits. They never raid the sprouting grains without first placing on the lookout an experienced veteran, who never fails to give loud warning of the approach of any danger. If the farmer is unarmed and the crows are hungry, he may approach within a very few yards before they take flight. But let him bear upon his shoulder an old