THE CATBIRD. 4301 
nounced favorably upon it, and it is allowable now to admit that Whistler was 
a great artist—that is, a great discoverer and revealer of Nature. 
Nature has painted upon our eastern hills a symphony in gray greens, a 
canvas of artemisia, simple, ample, insistent. And still the people stand be- 
fore it hesitating—it is so common—is it considered beautiful, pray? Well, 
at least a bird thinks so, a bird whose whole life has been spent in the sage. 
Listen! The hour is sunrise. As we face the east, heavy shadows still huddle 
about us and blend with the ill-defined realities. The stretching sage-tops 
tremble with oblation before the expectant sun. The pale dews are taking 
counsel for flight, but the opalescent haze, pregnant with sunfire, yet tender 
with cool greens and subtle azures, hovers over the altar waiting the con- 
comitance of the morning hymn before ascent. Suddenly, from a distant 
sage-bush bursts a geyser of song, a torrent of tuneful waters, gushing, as it 
would seem, from the bowels of the wilderness in an ecstacy of greeting and 
gratitude and praise. It is from the throat of the Sage Thrasher, poet of the 
bitter weed, that the tumult comes. Himself but a gray shadow, scarce visible 
in the early light, he pours out his soul and the soul of the sage in a rhapsody 
of holy joy. Impetuous, impassioned, compelling, rises this matchless music 
of the desert. To the silence of the gray-green canvas, beautiful but incom- 
plete, has come the throb and thrill of life,—tlife brimful, delirious, exultant. 
The freshness and the gladness of it touch the soul as with a magic. The 
heart of the listener glows, his veins tingle, his face beams. He cannot wait 
to analyze. He must dance and shout for joy. The wine of the wilderness 
is henceforth in his veins, and drunk with ecstacy he reels across the en- 
chanted scene forever more. 
And all this inspiration the bird draws from common sage and the rising 
of the common sun. How does he do it? I do not know. Ask Homer, 
Milton, Keats. 
No. 124. 
CADBIRD. 
ae O. U. No. 704. Dumetella carolinensis (Linn.). 
Description.—4 dult: Slate-color, lightening almost imperceptibly below; 
black on top of head and on tail; under tail-coverts chestnut, sometimes spotted 
with slaty; bill and feet black. Length 8.00-9.35 (203.2-237.5); wing 3.59 
(or-2)) > tail 3:65) (92.7); bill .62 (15-8). 
Recognition Marks.—Chewink size; almost uniform slaty coloration with 
thicket-haunting habits distinctive; lithe and slender as compared with Water 
Ouzel. 
