s most interesting feature
(for in itself the song is by no means of surpassing beauty), and I had
even been careful to record the earliest hour at which I had heard
it--three o'clock P. M. But on the 6th of May aforesaid I detected a
bird practicing this very tune in the morning, and from a perch! I set
the fact down without hesitation as a wonder,--a purely exceptional
occurrence, the repetition of which was not to be looked for. Anything
might happen once. Only four days afterwards, however, at half-past six
in the morning, I had stooped to gather some peculiarly bright-colored
anemones (I can see the patch of rosy blossoms at this moment, although
I am writing by a blazing fire while the snow is falling without), when
my ear caught the same song again; and keeping my position, I soon
descried the fellow stepping through the grass within ten yards of me,
caroling as he walked. The hurried warble, with the common _Weechee_,
_weechee_, _weechee_ interjected in the midst, was reiterated perhaps a
dozen times,--the full evening strain, but in a rather subdued tone. He
was under no excitement, and appeared to be entirely by himself; in
fact, when he had made about half the circuit round me he flew into a
low bush and proceeded to dress his feathers listlessly. Probably what I
had overheard was nothing more than a rehearsal. Within a week or two he
would need to do his very best in winning the fair one of his choice,
and for that supreme moment he had already put himself in training. The
wise-hearted and obliging little beau! I must have been the veriest
churl not to wish him his pick of all the feminine wagtails in the wood.
As for the pink anemones, they had done me a double kindness, in
requital for which I could only carry them to the city, where, in their
modesty, they would have blushed to a downright crimson had they been
conscious of one-half the admiration which their loveliness called
forth.

Before the end of the month (it was on the morning of the 18th) I once
more heard the wagtail's song from the ground. This time the affair was
anything but a rehearsal. There were two birds,--a lover and his
lass,--and the wooing waxed fast and furious. For that matter, it looked
not so much like love-making as like an aggravated case of assault and
battery. But, as I say, the male was warbling, and not improbably (so
strange are the ways of the world), if he had been a whit less
pugnacious in his addresses, his lady-love, w