ability, and
never fails to surprise and delight one anew at each hearing; but being
mostly an imitator, he never approaches the serene beauty and sublimity
of the Hermit-Thrush. The word that best expresses my feelings, on
hearing the Mocking-Bird, is admiration, though the first emotion is one
of surprise and incredulity. That so many and such various notes should
proceed from one throat is a marvel, and we regard the performance with
feelings akin to those we experience on witnessing the astounding feats
of the athlete or gymnast,--and this, notwithstanding many of the notes
imitated have all the freshness and sweetness of the original. The
emotions excited by the songs of these Thrushes belong to a higher
order, springing as they do from our deepest sense of the beauty and
harmony of the world.

The Wood-Thrush is worthy of all, and more than all, the praises he has
received; and considering the number of his appreciative listeners, it
is not a little surprising that his relative and superior, the
Hermit-Thrush, should have received so little notice. Both the great
ornithologists, Wilson and Audubon, are lavish in their praises of the
former, but have little or nothing to say of the song of the latter.
Audubon says it is sometimes agreeable, but evidently has never heard
it. Nuttall, I am glad to find, is more discriminating, and does the
bird fuller justice. Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, a
more recent authority, and an excellent observer, tells me he regards it
as preeminently our finest songster.

It is quite a rare bird, of very shy and secluded habits, being found in
the Middle and Eastern States, during the period of song, only in the
deepest and most remote forests, usually in damp and swampy localities.
On this account the people in the Adirondack region call it the "Swamp
Angel." Its being so much of a recluse accounts for the comparative
ignorance that prevails in regard to it.

The cast of its song is so much like that of the Wood-Thrush, that an
enthusiastic admirer of the latter bird, as all admirers are, would be
quite apt to mistake it for the strain of his favorite, observing only
how unusually well he sings. I myself erred in this manner, and not till
I had shot the bird in the midst of his solemn hymn--a hard thing to do,
I assure you--was I aware that my Wood-Thrush had a superior. I believe
so good an observer as Thoreau has confounded the songs of the two
birds, as he speaks