ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS. 67 
chords. They made many sorry and amusing at- 
tempts to chant and trill, but their voices would 
break and catch in the most remarkable ways, now 
sliding up too high in the scale, now sliding down 
too low, and now veering too much to one side, so 
to speak. One tyro, I observed, sang the first part 
of a run very well, almost as well, in fact, as an adult 
musician could have sung it; but when he tried to 
finish, his voice seemed to fly all to flinders. He 
made the attempt again and again, but to no pur- 
pose. It was a day for which I have cut a notch 
in the tally-stick of memory. Leaving the company 
of young vocalists at their rehearsals at the border 
of the woods, I made my way to a swamp not far 
off, where a pleasant surprise lay in ambush. Here 
were no longer found young song-sparrows, but 
adults, and you should have heard them sing. What 
a contrast between the crude songs of the young 
birds and the loud, clear, splendidly intoned and 
executed trills of these trained musicians ! 
But I must return to the subject of migration. 
The fifteenth of March was a raw, blustering day, 
as its predecessors had been; but in the woods sev- 
eral fox-sparrows were singing, not their best, of 
course, but fairly well for such weather. They must 
have come during the night. But why had they 
come when the weather was so cold? Most birds 
wait until there is a bland air-current from the south 
on which they can ride triumphantly. Had this 
small band of fox-sparrows followed the example 
of a well-known American humorist, and gone to 
