Song Birds and Water Fowl 
their own kind. They are not ranked as sing- 
ers, and usually splutter as badly as grackles; 
but a pair of notes one will sometimes hear from 
them are as rich as a starling’s, to which they are 
distantly related. 
If one can get near enough to a large flock of 
red-winged blackbirds chattering in a tree in 
spring, he will hear an effect I have never seen 
mentioned; beneath the loud and _ incessant 
medley of coarser notes, he will distinctly de- 
tect an almost continuous soft undertone of a 
very musical jangle, as of distant sleigh-bells— 
a reminiscence very apropos. 
It is interesting to notice how we find, an- 
nually, a copy in small of that supposed order 
of procedure which arranged the programme 
throughout the original creative year. The 
lowest order of plant-life is the algz or sea- 
weeds, which are represented very early in 
spring, or in the latter part of winter, by thick 
masses of confervee—the slimy, green substance 
so luxuriant in every stagnant pond and pool. 
Above the algz, in the scale of organization, 
are the mosses that, with equal promptness, 
richly deck the rocks, protruding roots, and 
trunks of trees. Still higher in the line are the 
two distinct groups of the monocotyledonous 
266 
