MINOR SONGSTERS. 179 
cording to the outward appearance, in ornithol- 
ogy as in other matters; and I have heard that 
it is only those who are foolish as well as igno- 
rant who indulge in off-hand criticisms of wiser 
men’s conclusions. So let us call the towhee a 
finch, and say no more about it. 
But whatever his lineage, it is plain that the 
chewink is not a bird to be governed very strictly 
by the traditions of the fathers. His usual song 
is characteristic and pretty, yet he is so far 
from being satisfied with it that he varies it con- 
tinually and in many ways, some of them sadly 
puzzling to the student who is set upon telling 
all the birds by their voices. I remember well 
enough the morning I was inveigled through the 
wet grass of two pastures— and that just as I 
was shod for the city — by a wonderfully for- 
eign note, which filled me with lively anticipa- 
tions of a new bird, but which turned out to be 
the work of a most innocent-looking towhee. It 
was perhaps this same bird, or his brother, whom 
I one day heard throwing in between his cus- 
tomary cherawinks a profusion of staccato notes 
of widely varying pitch, together with little vol- 
leys of tinkling sounds such as his every-day 
song concludes with. This medley was not laugh- 
able, like the chat’s, which it suggested, but it 
had the same abrupt, fragmentary, and promis- 
cuous character. Allin all, it was what I never 
