A MONTH'S MUSIC. 291 
ogist chances to fall in with an old-fashioned 
specimen who, still clings to the plain song as 
we now commonly hear it, he will fancy that 
to be the very latest modern improvement, and 
proceed forthwith to enlighten the scientific 
world with a description of the novelty. 
Hardly any incident of the month interested 
me more than a discovery (I must call it such, 
although I am almost ashamed to allude to it 
at all) which I made about the black-capped 
titmouse. For several mornings in succession 
I was greeted on waking by the trisyllabic 
minor whistle of a chickadee, who piped again 
and again not far from my window. There 
could be little doubt about its being the bird 
that I knew to be excavating a building site in 
one of our apple-trees; but I was usually not 
out-of-doors until about five o’clock, by which 
time the music always came to an end. So one 
day I rose half an hour earlier than common 
on purpose to have a look at my little matuti- 
nal serenader. My conjecture proved correct. 
There sat the tit, within a few feet of his ap- 
ple-branch door, throwing back his head in the 
truest lyrical fashion, and calling Hear, hear 
me, with only a breathing space between the 
repetitions of the phrase. He was as plainly 
singing, and as completely absorbed in his work, 
as any thrasher or hermit thrush could have 
