FAMILY Vireonide. 
deliberate orator who explains his subject in a few words 
and then makes a pause for his hearers to reflect upon it. 
afte ‘You see it—you know it—do you hear me?— 
do you believe it?’” W. E. D. Scott says of the song, it 
is ‘‘slow, drowsy, and broken. Hesitating as if at a 
loss for the next series of notes, the pause is long but 
they are sure to come.” But I can not, myself, see any- 
thing slow or drowsy about it; instead, one would im. 
agine the choppy sentences indicated that the bird was 
ever on the qui vive for the unexpected. Wilson has 
another idea about the music, for he says: ‘‘ Indeed, on 
attentively listening for some time to this bird in the full 
ardor of his song, it requires but little of imagination to 
fancy that you hear it pronounce these words, ‘* Tom- 
kelly . . . whip-tom-kelly!’ very distinctly.” But after 
all, from a human point of view, the language of a bird 
is entirely shaped by our state of mind and environ- 
ment; therefore, if we separate ourselves as far as possi- 
ble from such influences, and imagine that the bird is 
expressing his exuberant feelings by idle chatter as he 
searches for his breakfast and thinks his wife ought te 
be by his side to share it—I should venture to suggest 
he said this: ‘‘Fat worms . . ._ plenty to eat 
Gobble ’em up .. . they ’re sweet. . . . Come dear 
. don’t delay . . . Fly this way ... I’m here!” 
—but how do we know that? The fact of the case, how- 
ever, is not altered by imagined sentences; the mechani- 
cal rhythm of the Vireo’s song is perfectly expressed by 
a series of rapid beats, or taps, or sentences, or notes-- 
one does not care which—widely separated. There are 
two, three, four, or even five notes in a group, and these 
are given with such rapidity and with such a lack of 
true pitch, that all semblance of concerted tones or any- 
thing like tunefulness must not be expected at all! The 
bird can not sing a connected song ; his attempt is a sort 
of musical hash, a potpourri of tones, not melodies. 
Not the best songster in the country on the morning 
of the rarest day in June can give us a livelier, cheerier 
roundelay. In the gayest of spirits he sings from early 
May until the middle of August, and if some hot day in 
midsummer you enter the woods, and far up among 
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