A MIDSUMMER PRINCE. 225 
only the two middle feathers are black, and frequently the 
black on the back is skirted with orange, and the tail tip- 
ped with the same color.” Much confusion arose among 
the earlier naturalists from this cireumstance, though not 
quite so much as ensued upon the discovery of the cousin 
of this species—the orchard oriole—which bears the spe- 
cific name spurius to this day as a memory of the time 
when ornithologists called it a “ bastard.” 
The singing of the males is at its height now that the 
females have come, and they are to be heard, not only from 
field and grove and country way-side, but in the streets of 
villages, and even in the parks of cities, where they are rec- 
ognized by every school-boy, who calls them fire-birds, gold- 
en-robins, hang-nests, and Baltimore birds. The lindened 
avenues of Philadelphia, the elm-embowered precincts of 
New Haven, the sacred trees of Boston Common, the clas- 
sic shades of Harvard Square, and the malls of Central 
Park all echo to their spring-time music. 
The song of the oriole is indescribable, as to me are the 
tunes of most of the songsters. Nuttall’s ingenious sylla- 
bles are totally useless in expressing the pure and versatile 
fluting which floats down from the elm top. Wilson ecatch- 
es its spirit when he says that ‘‘there is in it a certain wild 
plaintiveness and ndévveté extremely interesting,” and that 
15 
