l64 MINOR SONGSTERS. 



classed among the minor songsters ; standing 

 in this respect in strong contrast with the true 

 Old World warblers, of whose musical capacity 

 enough, perhaps, is said when it is mentioned 

 that the nightingale is one of them. But, com- 

 parisons apart, our birds are by no means to be 

 despised, and not a few of their songs have a 

 good degree of merit. That of the well-known 

 summer yellow-bird may be taken as fairly rep- 

 resentative of the entire group, being neither 

 one of the best nor one of the poorest. He, I 

 have noticed, is given to singing late in the 

 day. Three of the New England species have 

 at the same time remarkably rough voices and 

 black throats, — I mean the black - throated 

 blue, the black-throated green, and the blue 

 golden -wing, — and seeing that the first two 

 are of the genus Dendroeca^ while the last is 

 a Helminthophaga., I have allowed myself to 

 query (half in earnest) whether they may not, 

 possibly, be more nearly related than the sys- 

 tematists have yet discovered. Several of the 

 warbler songs are extremely odd. The blue 

 yellow-back's, for example, is a brief, hoarse, 

 upward run, — a kind of scale exercise ; and if 

 the practice of such things be really as bene- 

 ficial as music teachers aflSrm, it would seem 

 that this little beauty must in time become a 

 vocalist of the first order. Nearly the same 



