rowth, and eluding your most
vigilant search, as if playing some part in a game. But in July or
August, if you are on good terms with the sylvan deities, you may listen
to a far more rare and artistic performance. Your first impression will
be that that cluster of Azalea or that clump of Swamp-Huckleberry
conceals three or four different songsters, each vying with the others
to lead the chorus. Such a medley of notes, snatched from half the
songsters of the field and forest, and uttered with the utmost clearness
and rapidity, I am sure you cannot hear short of the haunts of the
genuine Mocking-Bird. If not fully and accurately repeated, there are at
least suggested the notes of the Robin, Wren, Cat-Bird, High-Hole,
Goldfinch, and Song-Sparrow. The _pip, pip_, of the last is produced so
accurately that I verily believe it would deceive the bird herself,--and
the whole uttered in such rapid succession that it seems as if the
movement that gives the concluding note of one strain must form the
first note of the next. The effect is very rich, and, to my ear,
entirely unique. The performer is very careful not to reveal himself in
the mean time; yet there is a conscious air about the strain that
impresses one with the idea that his presence is understood and his
attention courted. A tone of pride and glee, and, occasionally, of
bantering jocoseness, is discernible. I believe it is only rarely, and
when he is sure of his audience, that he displays his parts in this
manner. You are to look for him, not in tall trees or deep forests, but
in low, dense shrubbery about wet places, where there are plenty of
gnats and mosquitoes.

The Winter-Wren is another marvellous songster, in speaking of whom it
is difficult to avoid superlatives. He is not so conscious of his powers
and so ambitious of effect as the White-Eyed Flycatcher, yet you will
not be less astonished and delighted on hearing him. He possesses the
fluency, volubility, and copiousness for which the Wrens are noted, and
besides these qualities, and what is rarely found conjoined with them, a
wild, sweet, rhythmical cadence that holds you entranced. I shall not
soon forget that perfect June day, when, loitering in a low, ancient
Hemlock, in whose cathedral aisles the coolness and freshness seemed
perennial, the silence was suddenly broken by a strain so rapid and
gushing, and touched with such a wild, sylvan plaintiveness, that I
listened in amazement. And so shy and coy was