194 SOME TENNESSEE BIRD NOTES. 



son between eastern Tennessee — as I saw 

 it — and eastern Massachusetts, tlie Bach- 

 man sparrow must be set against the song 

 sparrow, the vesper sparrow, and the swamp 

 sparrow. It is a brilliant and charming 

 songster, one of the very finest ; but it 

 would be too costly a bargain to buy its 

 presence with loss of the song sparrow's 

 abounding versatility and high spirits, and 

 the vesper sparrow's unfailing sweetness, 

 serenity, and charm. 



So much for the sparrows, commonly so 

 called. If we come to the family as a whole, 

 the goodly family of sparrows and finches, 

 we miss in Tennessee the rose-breasted gros- 

 beak and the purple finch, two of our best 

 esteemed Massachusetts birds, both for 

 music and for beaut}^; to offset which we 

 have the cardinal grosbeak, whose whistle is 

 exquisite, but who can hardly be ranked as 

 a singer above either the rose-breast or the 

 linnet, to say nothing of the two combined. 



At the season of my visit, — in the latter 

 half of the vernal migration, — the prepon- 

 derance of woodland birds, especially of the 

 birds known as wood warblers, was very 

 striking. Of ninety-three species observed, 



