254 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



In the way of music, neither bird is equal to 

 the brown thrasher of the East. In fact, if I am 

 to be judge, one Massachusetts thrasher, in his 

 cinnamon-colored suit (and in the top of a gray 

 birch), could outsing any half-dozen of the birds 

 in this Arizona desert. It is to be said, however, 

 that there is a third species here (not on the face 

 of the desert itself, but in the thickets along the 

 Eillito River), the crissal thrasher so called, 

 whose song I have yet to make sure of. He is 

 larger even than the Palmer, and to look at him 

 should have a fuller voice. 



And this reminds me that I had been in Tuc- 

 son more than a month before I saw a mocking- 

 bird ; and even now, when I have been here 

 almost two months, I have seen but three. The 

 people generally seem to mistake the thrashers 

 for mockers. If I speak to them about the 

 strangeness of the mocker's absence, they declare 

 that mockers are common here. At least two 

 persons have turned upon me with the assertion, 

 " Why, there 's one singing out there at this 

 minute." And they point to a thrasher, a bird 

 that wears not one of the mocker's three colors, 

 gray, black, and white, and for music is as 

 much like him as a child's tin whistle is like a 

 master's flute. And still it is true, at least the 

 systematists tell us so, and I have no thought of 



