164 MINOR SQYGSTERS. 
classed among the minor songsters; standing 
in this respect in strong contrast with the true 
Old World warblers, of whose musical capacity 
enough, perhaps, is said when it is mentioned 
that the nightingale is one of them. But, com- 
parisons apart, our birds are by no means to be 
despised, and not a few of their songs have a 
good degree of merit. That of the well-known 
summer yellow-bird may be taken as fairly rep- 
resentative of the entire group, being neither 
one of the best nor one of the poorest. He, I 
have noticed, is given to singing late in the 
day. ‘Three of the New England species have 
at the same time remarkably rough voices and 
black throats, —I mean the black - throated 
blue, the black-throated green, and the blue 
golden-wing, — and seeing that the first two 
are of the genus Dendreca, while the last is 
a Helminthophaga, I have allowed myself to 
query (half in earnest) whether they may not, 
possibly, be more nearly related than the sys- 
tematists have yet discovered. Several of the 
warbler songs are extremely odd. ‘The blue 
yellow-back’s, for example, is a brief, hoarse, 
upward run, —a kind of scale exercise ; and if 
the practice of such things be really as bene- 
ficial as music teachers affirm, it would seem 
that this little beauty must in time become a 
vocalist of the first order. Nearly the same 
