340 THE NATURALIST OF THE ST. CROIX 



O holy, holy, O clear away, clear away, O clear up, clear 

 up ! " interspersed with the finest trills and most delicate 

 preludes, as if the little creature were praying for the 

 bright sunny days of midsummer. It has not a proud 

 strain like the mocking bird or tanager, it suggests no 

 passion or emotion ; but its note seems to be the voice 

 of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains in his best 

 moments. A bird collector, I am sorry to say it was I, 

 shot one while singing. I opened its beak and found 

 the inside yellow as gold. I was almost prepared to find 

 it inlaid with pearls or diamonds, or to see an angel 

 issue from it. All the thrush family are fine singers, but 

 the hermit thrush the best of them all. 



During the last of May and early days in June is the 

 time for the student of ornithology to study the birds. 

 They are then nesting and in full song and plumage. 

 We little suspect when we walk in the woods, or even 

 under the large trees of our sidewalks, whose privacy we 

 are intruding upon — that over our heads are rare and 

 elegant visitants from Florida, Central America and the 

 islands of the seas. 



The birds of the family Turdidae, the thrushes, belong 

 to the highest rank of bird intelligence and to the first 

 rank among song birds. Our common robin, though 

 not a wonderful songster like the hermit thrush or the 

 " veery," called the Wilson's thrush, the blue-bird, with 

 its sweet warble and the brown thrush, in some parts 

 called the mocking bird (the two last named seldom 

 making their appearance so far north as Calais), is often 

 classed with the thrushes. 



There are five species of thrushes listed among the 

 birds of Eastern North America; but there are only 



