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 How a Marsh Hawk Grows 49 nearly threu months of domestic toil and devotion on the part of its parents. No wonder that both the parents and the young should cling to the dear, familiar spot. No wonder that the parents should return, year by year, to the hunting range they know so well ; and that even the young, when freed from the trammels of their lairs, should yet come back, for days, as I have seen them do, and haunt the spot wherein they gained their bulk, strengthened their sinews and fortified their wings for freedom. Yet the daily length- ened flight transforms the hasty flapping of the short-tailed tyro into the steadier poise of the practiced wingster : and soon the brown birds, old and young, have left the gray ones to brave the autumn air — and have gone afar to fatten on the southern fields. MARSH HAWKS, 34 DAYS OLD