MIDSUMMER MELODIES. sil E 
repay the closest attention. Some birds are almost 
as active when the mercury is wrestling with the 
nineties as on the fairest day of May, and those 
are the ones to be studied in midsummer. 
My special investigations began about the middle 
of July. It is true that at that time what are usually 
regarded as the songsters of the first class —the 
brown thrashers, wood-thrushes, cat-birds, and bobo- 
links —had gone into a conspiracy of silence, not 
a musical note coming from their throats, although 
some of them always remain in this latitude until 
far into September. But when the first-class min- 
strels are mute, one appreciates the minor vocalists 
allthe more. Yet I must not omit to say that on 
the thirtieth of July I caught a fragment of a wood- 
thrush’s song, the last I heard for the season. 
Let me recall one day in particular. It was the 
tenth of August, and the weather was broiling, — hot 
enough to drive the thermometer into hysterics, 
just the day to see how the heat would affect the 
feathered tenants of the groves; and so, overcoming 
my physical inertia as best I could, I stalked to 
the woods in the afternoon in quest of bird lore. 
With the perspiration running from every pore, I 
trudged about for some time without seeing or hear- 
ing a single bird. Were the books correct, after all? 
Was I to be deprived of the pleasure of proving 
them in error? It began to appear as if such 
might be the case. Presently, however, as I pushed 
out into a gap at one side of the woods, an uneasy 
chirping in the clumps of bushes and brambles near 
