lO NATURE STUDY. 



in 1847. He was an extensiv^e European traveler, and 

 while abroad, and doubtless after listening to the nightin- 

 gale, or " philomene of Sussex," wrote these fourtee^^ 

 lines : 



TO THE MOCKING-BIRD. 



Wing'd mimic of the woods : thou motlej^ fool, 

 Who shall th}' gay buffoonery describe ? 

 Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule, 

 Pursue thy fellows with jest and gibe : 

 Wit, sophist, songster, Yorick of thy tribe. 

 Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school ; 

 To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe. 

 Arch-mocker and mad Abbot of misrule : 

 For such thou art by day, but all night long 

 Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain, 

 As if thou didst in this thj' moonlight song 

 Like to the melanchol}' Jaques complain, 

 INIusing on falsehood, folly, vice and wrong, 

 And singing for th}'^ motley coat again. 



I imagine that Mr. Wilde was then longing for his old 

 haunts amid the oleanders of the Mississippi. Be that as 

 it may, he certainly knew America's (ought to be) nation- 

 al bird, which it is de jtire. 



The Bonaparte mentioned in the former part of this arti- 

 cle was Charles Lucien, Prince of Canino, and a brother 

 of the great Napoleon. This Prince Lucien, wnth the as- 

 si.stance of our fellow- American, J. J. Audubon (by birth 

 a Frenchman), compiled and wrote the " Geographical and 

 Comparative Ornithology of Europe and North America. " 

 A pretty lengthy title-name for a book, but no more so than 

 that of the Prince, if you stretch it out. Who has to the 

 world rendered the most loving, and of course the greater, 

 ser\'ice for humanitj- — the brother, a naturalist, who digni- 

 fied the science of Ornithology with his labor, station, for- 

 tune and genius, and whose memory' is histo7-icd, so to 

 speak, in the .song of the Mocking-Bird, or the brother, as 



