kbird. He said I might as well talk of the song of man; that every
blackbird had its own song; and then he told me of a remarkable singer
he used to hear somewhere amid the Scottish hills. But his singer was,
of course, an exception; twenty-four blackbirds out of every
twenty-five probably sing the same song, with no appreciable
variations: but the twenty-fifth may show extraordinary powers. I told
Stevenson that his famous singer had probably been to school to some
nightingale on the Continent or in southern England. I might have told
him of the robin I once heard here that sang with great spirit and
accuracy the song of the brown thrasher, or of another that had the
note of the whip-poor-will interpolated in the regular robin song, or
of still another that had the call of the quail. In each case the
bird had probably heard the song and learned it while very young. In
the Trossachs, in Scotland, I followed a song thrush about for a long
time, attracted by its peculiar song. It repeated over and over again
three or four notes of a well-known air, which it might have caught
from some shepherd boy whistling to his flock or to his cow.

The songless birds--why has Nature denied them this gift? But they
nearly all have some musical call or impulse that serves them very
well. The quail has his whistle, the woodpecker his drum, the pewee
his plaintive cry, the chickadee his exquisitely sweet call, the
highhole his long, repeated "wick, wick, wick," one of the most
welcome sounds of spring, the jay his musical gurgle, the hawk his
scream, the crow his sturdy caw. Only one of our pretty birds of the
orchard is reduced to an all but inaudible note, and that is the
cedar-bird.

III

NATURE WITH CLOSED DOORS

December in our climate is the month when Nature finally shuts up
house and turns the key. She has been slowly packing up and putting
away her things and closing a door and a window here and there all the
fall. Now she completes the work and puts up the last bar. She is
ready for winter. The leaves are all off the trees, except that here
and there a beech or an oak or a hickory still clings to a remnant of
its withered foliage. Her streams are full, her new growths of wood
are ripened, her saps and juices are quiescent. The muskrat has
completed his house in the shallow pond or stream, the beaver in the
northern woods has completed his. The wild mice and the