mocking-bird off her nest in an
orange-tree,--till my hands were full. It is too bad I have forgotten
how many pecan-trees he had planted, and how many sheep he kept. A
well-regulated memory would have held fast to such figures: mine is
certain only that there were four eggs in the mocking-bird's nest. Mr.
G. was a man of enterprise, at any rate; a match for any Yankee,
although he had come to Florida not from Yankeeland, but from northern
Georgia. I hope all his crops are still thriving, especially his white
roses and his Marshal Niels.

In the lane, after skirting some pleasant woods, which I meant to visit
again, but found no opportunity, I was suddenly assaulted by a pair of
brown thrashers, half beside themselves after their manner because of my
approach to their nest. How close my approach was I cannot say; but it
must be confessed that I played upon their fears to the utmost of my
ability, wishing to see as many of their neighbors as the disturbance
would bring together. Several other thrashers, a catbird, and two house
wrens appeared (all these, since "blood is thicker than water," may have
felt some special cousinly solicitude, for aught I know), with a
ruby-crowned kinglet and a field sparrow.

In the valley, near a little pond, as I came out into the Meridian road,
a solitary vireo was singing, in the very spot where one had been heard
six days before. Was it the same bird? I asked myself. And was it
settled for the summer? Such an explanation seemed the more likely
because I had found no solitary vireo anywhere else about the city,
though the species had been common earlier in the season in eastern and
southern Florida, where I had seen my last one--at New Smyrna--March 26.

At this same dip in the Meridian road, on a previous visit, I had
experienced one of the pleasantest of my Tallahassee sensations. The
morning was one of those when every bird is in tune. By the road side I
had just passed Carolina wrens, house wrens, a chipper, a field sparrow,
two thrashers, an abundance of chewinks, two orchard orioles, several
tanagers, a flock of quail, and mocking-birds and cardinals uncounted.
In a pine wood near by, a wood pewee, a pine warbler, a yellow-throated
warbler, and a pine-wood sparrow were singing--a most peculiarly select
and modest chorus. Just at the lowest point in the valley I stopped to
listen to a song which I did not recognize, but which, by and by, I
settled upon as probably the work of a f