220 A BIRD-LOVER'S APRIL. 



in a voice not more than half as loud as what 

 he had been using ; after which, as if to cap 

 the climax, he several times followed the tune 

 with a detached phrase or two in a still fainter 

 voice. This last was pretty certainly an im- 

 provised cadenza, such a thing as I do not re- 

 member ever to have heard before from Melo- 

 spiza melodia. 



The song of the fox sparrow has at times an 

 almost thrush-like quality ; and the bird him- 

 self, as he flies up in front of you, might easily 

 be mistaken for some member of that noble 

 family. Once, indeed, when I saw him eating 

 burning-bush berries in a Boston garden, I was 

 half ready to believe that I had before my eyes 

 a living example of the development of one 

 species out of another, — a finch already well 

 on his way to become a thrush. Most often, 

 however, his voice puts me in mind of the car- 

 dinal grosbeak's ; his voice, and perhaps still 

 more his cadence, and especially his practice of 

 the portamento. 



The 11th of the month was sunny, and the 

 next morning I came back from my accustomed 

 rounds under a sense of bereavement : the fox 

 sparrows were gone. Where yesterday there 

 had been hundreds of them, now I could find 

 only two silent stragglers. They had been well 

 scattered over the township, — here a flock and 



