ute the palm, perhaps, but that he is merely a
semi-annual visitor in most parts of Massachusetts. If perfection be
held to consist in the absence of flaw, the hermit's is unquestionably
the more nearly perfect song of the two. Whatever he attempts is done
beyond criticism; but his range and variety are far less than his
rival's, and, for my part, I can forgive the latter if now and then he
reaches after a note lying a little beyond his best voice, and withal is
too commonly wanting in that absolute simplicity and ease which lend
such an ineffable charm to the performance of the hermit and the veery.
Shakespeare is not a faultless poet, but in the existing state of public
opinion it will hardly do to set Gray above him.

In the course of the month about which I am now writing (May, 1884) I
was favored with thrush music to a quite unwonted degree. With the
exception of the varied thrush (a New-Englander by accident only) and
the mocking-bird, there was not one of our Massachusetts representatives
of the family who did not put me in his debt. The robin, the brown
thrush, the cat-bird, the wood thrush, the veery, and even the hermit
(what a magnificent sextette!)--so many I counted upon hearing, as a
matter of course; but when to these were added the Arctic thrushes--the
olive-backed and the gray-cheeked--I gladly confessed surprise. I had
never heard either species before, south of the White Mountains; nor, as
far as I then knew, had anybody else been more fortunate than myself.
Yet the birds themselves were seemingly unaware of doing anything new or
noteworthy. This was especially the case with the olive-backs; and after
listening to them for three days in succession I began to suspect that
they _were_ doing nothing new,--that they had sung every spring in the
same manner, only, in the midst of the grand May medley, my ears had
somehow failed to take account of their contribution. Their fourth (and
farewell) appearance was on the 23d, when they sang both morning and
evening. At that time they were in a bit of swamp, among some tall
birches, and as I caught the familiar and characteristic notes--a brief
ascending spiral--I was almost ready to believe myself in some primeval
New Hampshire forest; an illusion not a little aided by the frequent
lisping of black-poll warblers, who chanced just then to be remarkably
abundant.

It was on the same day, and within a short distance of the same spot,
that the Alice thrushes, or gr