ess household, and his anger and indignation are
beautiful to behold.

What a noble pride he has! Late one October, after his mates and
companions had long since gone South, I noticed one for several
successive days in the dense part of this next-door wood, flitting
noiselessly about, very grave and silent, as if doing penance for some
violation of the code of honor. By many gentle, indirect approaches, I
perceived that part of his tail-feathers were undeveloped. The sylvan
prince could not think of returning to court in this plight,--and so,
amid the falling leaves and cold rains of autumn, was patiently biding
his time.

The soft, mellow flute of the Veery fills a place in the chorus of the
woods that the song of the Vesper-Sparrow fills in the chorus of the
fields. It has the Nightingale's habit of singing in the twilight, and
possesses, I believe, all of the Nightingale's mellowness and serenity.
Walk out toward the forest in the warm twilight of a June day, and when
fifty rods distant you will hear their soft, reverberating notes,
repeated and prolonged with exquisite melodiousness, rising from a dozen
different throats.

It is one of the simplest strains to be heard,--as simple as the curve
in form, and mellower than the tenderest tones of the flute,--delighting
from the pure element of harmony and beauty it contains, and not from
any novel or fantastic modulation of it,--thus contrasting strongly with
such rollicking, hilarious songsters as the Bobolink, in whom we are
chiefly pleased with the tintinnabulation, the verbal and labial
excellence, and the evident conceit and delight of the performer.

I hardly know whether I am more pleased or annoyed with the Cat-Bird.
Perhaps she is a little too common, and her part in the general chorus a
little too conspicuous. If you are listening for the note of another
bird, she is sure to be prompted to the most loud and protracted
singing, drowning all other sounds; if you sit quietly down to observe a
favorite or study a new comer, her curiosity knows no bounds, and you
are scanned and ridiculed from every point of observation. Yet I would
not miss her; I would only subordinate her a little, make her less
conspicuous.

She is the parodist of the woods, and there is ever a mischievous,
bantering, half-ironical undertone in her lay, as if she were conscious
of mimicking and disconcerting some envied songster. Ambitious of song,
practising and rehearsing in private, she