226 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 
it is uttered “with the pleasing tranquillity of a careless 
ploughboy whistling for his own amusement.” It is a joy- 
ous, contented song, standing out from the chorus that 
greets our half-awakened ears at daylight as brightly as its 
author shines against the dewy foliage. T. W. Higginson 
exclaims, “ Yonder oriole fills with light and melody the 
thousand branches of a neighborhood.” It is a song vary- 
ing with the tune and circumstances, and, as among all 
birds, some orioles are better performers than others. Dr. 
Brewer thought that when they first arrived, and were 
awaiting the females, the voices of the males were loud 
and somewhat shrill, as though in lamentation, and that 
this song changed into a “richer, lower, and more pleasing 
refrain”? when they were joined by their partners. The 
quality of their music is certainly different in different 
parts of the country, seeming, for example, to be more sub- 
dued toward the northern limit of their range. 
A writer in an old number of Putnam's Magazine de- 
scribes two orioles with which he had been acquainted for 
several summers. These birds had taken up their resi- 
dences within about a quarter of a mile of each other, one 
in a public park, and the other in an orchard. “And often,” 
says the narrator, “have I heard the chief musician of the 
orchard, on the topmost bough of an ancient apple-tree, sing, 
