SOME MINOR SONG-BIRDS. 157 
habitually slept in a hammock while outing in 
the Southern woods, and no words can convey 
the singularly delicious sense of calm and 
quiet luxury which comes of hearing, far in the 
solemn night, the low, liquid, drowsy nocturne 
of one or both of these charming musicians! 
The brown-thrush has not had his full meed 
of praise from our poets. Asa conventional 
figure, the nightingale—a bird quite unknown 
to Americans—has retained its place on the 
palette of our word-painters, much to the hurt 
Ge our poetry. In ‘facet, P fancy 1° can eo 
through American poetry and point out every 
passage wherein an author has alluded toa 
bird that he has never seen. Howcan any one 
describe the fragrance of sweet-clover without 
having it in his nostrils at the moment of writ- 
ing? Howcan I write sincerely about the song 
of the brown-thrush or the cat-bird, if I have 
not the stimulus of that song in my brain? 
In the far-reaching tangles of wild. grape- 
vines, found here and there in the beautiful 
little valleys of North Georgia, the brown- 
thrushes sing to the perfection of their powers 
from the early days of April until the first of 
June ; that is, they make the vine-masses their 
home, and do their melodious gushing on the 
very ‘topmost boughs of the highest trees. 
This is not over-statement; it is one of the 
most striking sights of the Southern woods to 
see a brown-thrush at about sunrise, sitting on 
the apex of the cone-shaped top of a giant 
pine-tree, whilst its song falls in a shower of 
fragmentary and ecstatic -trills and quavers 
over all the surrounding woods. This per- 
formance often extends over the space of an 
hour or more, with but slight intermissions. 
