, that the European birds are a
more hardy and pugnacious race than ours, and that their song-birds
have more vivacity and power, and ours more melody and plaintiveness.
In the song of the skylark, for instance, there is little or no melody,
but wonderful strength and copiousness. It is a harsh strain near at
hand, but very taking when showered down from a height of several
hundred feet.

Daines Barrington, the naturalist of the last century, to whom White of
Selborne addressed so many of his letters, gives a table of the
comparative merit of seventeen leading song-birds of Europe, marking
them under the heads of mellowness, sprightliness, plaintiveness,
compass, and execution. In the aggregate, the songsters stand highest
in sprightliness, next in compass and execution, and lowest in the
other two qualities. A similar arrangement and comparison of our
songsters, I think, would show an opposite result,--that is, a
predominance of melody and plaintiveness. The British wren, for
instance, stands in Barrington's table as destitute of both these
qualities; the reed sparrow also. Our wren-songs, on the contrary, are
gushing and lyrical, and more or less melodious,--that of the winter
wren being preeminently so. Our sparrows, too, all have sweet,
plaintive ditties, with but little sprightliness or compass. The
English house sparrow has no song at all, but a harsh chatter that is
unmatched among our birds. But what a hardy, prolific, pugnacious
little wretch it is! These birds will maintain themselves where our
birds will not live at all, and a pair of them will lie down in the
gutter and fight like dogs. Compared with this miniature John Bull, the
voice and manners of our common sparrow are gentle and retiring. The
English sparrow is a street gamin, our bird a timid rustic.

The English robin redbreast is tallied in this country by the bluebird,
which was called by the early settlers of New England the blue robin.
The song of the British bird is bright and animated, that of our bird
soft and plaintive.

The nightingale stands at the head in Barrington's table, and is but
little short of perfect in all the qualities. We have no one bird that
combines such strength or vivacity with such melody. The mockingbird
doubtless surpasses it in variety and profusion of notes; but falls
short, I imagine, in sweetness and effectiveness. The nightingale will
sometimes warble twenty seconds without pausing to breathe, and when
the condi