brief sojourn, and besides are kept in a state of greater or less
excitement by the frequent approach of passers-by. Nevertheless, I once
heard a bobolink sing in our Garden (the only one I ever saw there), and
once a brown thrush, although neither was sufficiently at home to do
himself justice. The "Peabody" song of the white-throated sparrows is to
be heard occasionally during both migrations. It is the more welcome in
such a place, because, to my ears at least, it is one of the wildest of
all bird notes; it is among the last to be heard at night in the White
Mountain woods, as well as one of the last to die away beneath you as
you climb the higher peaks. On the Crawford bridle path, for instance, I
remember that the song of this bird and that of the gray-cheeked
thrush[1] were heard all along the ridge from Mount Clinton to Mount
Washington. The finest bird concert I ever attended in Boston was given
on Monument Hill by a great chorus of fox-colored sparrows, one morning
in April. A high wind had been blowing during the night, and the moment
I entered the Common I discovered that there had been an extraordinary
arrival of birds, of various species. The parade ground was full of
snow-birds, while the hill was covered with fox-sparrows,--hundreds of
them, I thought, and many of them in full song. It was a royal concert,
but the audience, I am sorry to say, was small. It is unfortunate, in
some aspects of the case, that birds have never learned that a _matinee_
ought to begin at two o'clock in the afternoon.

These sparrows please me by their lordly treatment of their European
cousins. One in particular, who was holding his ground against three of
the Britishers, moved me almost to the point of giving him three cheers.

Of late a few crow blackbirds have taken to building their nests in one
corner of our domain; and they attract at least their full share of
attention, as they strut about the lawns in their glossy clerical suits.
One of the gardeners tells me that they sometimes kill the sparrows. I
hope they do. The crow blackbird's attempts at song are ludicrous in the
extreme, as every note is cracked, and is accompanied by a ridiculous
caudal gesture. But he is ranked among the oscines, and seems to know
it; and, after all, it is only the common fault of singers not to be
able to detect their own want of tunefulness.

I was once crossing the Common, in the middle of the day, when I was
suddenly arrested by the cal