254 NATURAL HISTORY IN ANECDOTE. 



Y^Q The Mocking Bird is a native of America and 



Mocking many stories are told of its wonderful powers 



Bird. o f m i m icry. The following description is furnished 

 by Wilson: "The plumage of the Mocking Bird, though 

 none of the homeliest, has nothing gaudy or brilliant in it, 

 and, had he nothing else to recommend him, would scarcely 

 entitle him to notice ; but his figure is well proportioned, and 

 even handsome. The ease, elegance, and rapidity of his 

 movements, the animation of his eye, and the intelligence 

 he displays in listening, and laying up lessons from almost 

 every species of the feathered creation within his hearing, 

 are really surprising, and mark the peculiarity of his genius. 

 In his native groves, mounted upon the top of a tall bush 

 or half grown tree, in the dawn of a dewy morning, while 

 the woods are already vocal with a multitude of warblers, 

 his admirable song rises pre-eminent over every competitor. 

 The ear can listen to his music alone, to which that of all 

 the others seems a mere accompaniment. Neither is this 

 strain altogether imitative. His own native notes, which are 

 easily distinguishable by such as are acquainted with those 

 of our various song birds, are bold and full, and varied 

 seemingly beyond all limits. They consist of short expres- 

 sions of two, three, or at the most five or six syllables, generally 

 interspersed with imitations, and all of them uttered with 

 great emphasis and rapidity, and continued with undiminished 

 ardour for half an hour, or an hour, at a time. His expanded 

 wings and tail, glistening with white, and the buoyant gaiety 

 of his action, arresting the eye, as his song most irresistibly 

 does the ear, he sweeps round with enthusiastic ecstasy and 

 mounts and descends as his song swells or dies away. 'He 

 bounds aloft with the celerity of an arrow, as if to recover 

 or recall his very soul, which expired in the last elevated 

 strain.' He often deceives the sportsman, and sends him in 

 search of birds that are not perhaps within miles of him, but 

 whose notes he exactly imitates: even birds themselves are 



