rocuring specimens. This
bird is a warbler, plainly enough, from his habits and manner; but
what kind of warbler? Look on him and name him: a deep orange or
flame-colored throat and breast; the same color showing also in a line
over the eye and in his crown; back variegated black and white. The
female is less marked and brilliant. The orange-throated warbler would
seem to be his right name, his characteristic cognomen; but no, he is
doomed to wear the name of some discoverer, perhaps the first who
rifled his nest or robbed him of his mate,--Blackburn; hence
Blackburnian warbler. The burn seems appropriate enough, for in these
dark evergreens his throat and breast show like flame. He has a very
fine warble, suggesting that of the redstart, but not especially
musical. I find him in not other woods in this vicinity.

I am attracted by another warble in the same locality, and experience
a like difficulty in getting a good view of the author of it. It is
quite a noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds well amid
the the old trees. In the upland woods of beech and maple it is a more
familiar sound than in these solitudes. On taking the bird in hand,
one can not help exclaiming, "How beautiful!" So tiny and elegant, the
smallest of the warblers; a delicate blue back, with a slight
bronze-colored triangular spot between the shoulders; upper mandible
black; lower mandible yellow as gold; throat yellow, becoming a dark
bronze on the breast. Blue yellow-back he is called, though the yellow
is much nearer a bronze. He is remarkably delicate and beautiful,--the
handsomest as he is the smallest of the warblers known to me. It is
never without surprise that I find amid these rugged, savage aspects
of nature creatures so fairy and delicate. But such is the law. Go to
the sea or climb the mountain, and with the ruggedest and the savagest
you will find likewise the fairest and the most delicate. The
greatness and the minuteness of nature pass all understanding.

Ever since I entered the woods, even while listening to the lesser
songsters, or contemplating the silent forms about me, a strain has
reached my ears from out of the depths of the forest that to me is the
finest sound in nature,--the song of the hermit thrush. I often hear
him thus a long way off, sometimes over a quarter of a mile away, when
only the stronger and more perfect parts of his music reach me; and
through the general chorus of wrens and warblers I detect th