SONGS OUT OF SEASON. 115 



season and passes for the song of that bird, and 

 there is a certain clarion-like music about it. 

 Although it is seldom repeated, except in the 

 spring, I have heard it more than once in Novem- 

 ber, December and January, piped in soft, almost 

 dulcet tones. 



Have other students of the bird kingdom heard 

 the song of the white-throated sparrow in the 

 autumn ? It is a rare sound, yet I heard it one 

 day in October while strolling through the woods. 

 This matchless songster seems to carry an ^olian 

 harp in his throat. Like a wavering line of light 

 it comes up from the tanglewood. The movement 

 is deliberate at first, then becomes more and more 

 accelerated, and dies away in a cadence exquisitely 

 sweet. 



However, no bird has afforded me so much 

 delight in this special line of investigation as the 

 song sparrow ; not because he sings more sweetly 

 than many other minstrels, but because of his in- 

 defatigable industry. I have heard him singing 

 with great vigor as early as February, during a 

 few days of warm weather, and of course every one 

 who pays the slightest attention to birds has been 

 delighted with his madrigals and lullabies in March, 

 April, June and July. Yet he does not. then lay 



