we say now about the lesser lights of that most musical
family, the finches? Of course the cardinal and rose-breasted grosbeaks
are not to be included in any such category. Nor will _I_ put there the
goldfinch, the linnet, the fox-colored sparrow, and the song sparrow.
These, if no more, shall stand among the immortals; so far, at any rate,
as my suffrage counts. But who ever dreamed of calling the chipping
sparrow a fine singer? And yet, who that knows it does not love his
earnest, long-drawn trill, dry and tuneless as it is? I can speak for
one, at all events; and he always has an ear open for it by the middle
of April. It is the voice of a friend,--a friend so true and gentle and
confiding that we do not care to ask whether his voice be smooth and his
speech eloquent.

The chipper's congener, the field sparrow, is less neighborly than he,
but a much better musician. His song is simplicity itself; yet, even at
its lowest estate, it never fails of being truly melodious, while by
one means and another its wise little author contrives to impart to it a
very considerable variety, albeit within pretty narrow limits. Last
spring the field sparrows were singing constantly from the middle of
April till about the 10th of May, when they became entirely dumb. Then,
after a week in which I heard not a note, they again grew musical. I
pondered not a little over their silence, but concluded that they were
just then very much occupied with preparations for housekeeping.

The bird who is called indiscriminately the grass finch, the bay-winged
bunting, the bay-winged sparrow, the vesper sparrow, and I know not what
else (the ornithologists have nicknamed him _Pooecetes gramineus_), is
a singer of good parts, but is especially to be commended for his
refinement. In form his music is strikingly like the song sparrow's; but
the voice is not so loud and ringing, and the two or three opening notes
are less sharply emphasized. In general the difference between the two
songs may perhaps be well expressed by saying that the one is more
declamatory, the other more _cantabile_; a difference exactly such as we
might have expected, considering the nervous, impetuous disposition of
the song sparrow and the placidity of the bay-wing.

As one of his titles indicates, the bay-wing is famous for singing in
the evening, when, of course, his efforts are doubly acceptable; and I
can readily believe that Mr. Minot is correct in his "impression" that
he