ccording to R.C. Taylor, Esq.,
one hundred and twenty feet in length: it lies in an east and west
direction, the head towards the west, with the arms and legs extended.
The body or trunk is thirty feet in breadth, the head twenty-five, and
its elevation above the general surface of the prairie is about six
feet. Its conformation is so distinct, that there can be no possibility
of mistake in assigning it to the human figure.

* * * * *

=_Charles Wilkins Webber, 1819-1856._= (Manual, p. 505.)

From "Wild Scenes and Song-birds."

=_265._= THE MOCKING-BIRD.

THE next spring a new melody filled the air. A melody such as I had
never heard before burst in clear and overwhelming raptures from
the meadows where I had first seen the graceful stranger with the
white-barred wings, last year.... I saw it now leaping up from its
favorite perch on a tree-top much in the manner I had observed before,
but now it was in a different mood and seemed to mount thus spirit-like
upon the wilder ecstasies, and floating fall upon the subsiding cadence,
of that passionate song it poured into the listening ear of love, for I
could see his mate, with fainter bars across her wings, where she sat
upon a thornbush near, and listened. When this magnificent creature
commenced to sing, the very air was burdened with a thousand different
notes; but his voice rose clear and melodiously loud above them all.
As I listened, one song after another ceased suddenly, until, in a few
minutes, and before I could realize that it was so, I found myself
hearkening to that solitary voice. This is a positive fact. I looked
around me in astonishment. What! Are they awed? But his song only now
grew more exulting, and, as if feeling his triumph, he bounded yet
higher, with each new gush, and in swift and quivering raptures dived,
skimmed, and floated round--round--then rose to fall again more boldly
on the billowy storm of sound.

... This curious phenomenon I have witnessed many times since. Even in
the morning choir, when every little throat seems strained in emulation,
if the mocking-bird breathes forth in one of its mad, bewildered, and
bewildering extravaganzas, the other birds pause almost invariably, and
remain silent until his song is done. This, I assure you, is no figment
of the imagination, or illusion of an excited fancy; it is just as
substantial a fact as any other one in natural history. Whether the
other birds stop f