138 BY- WA YS AND BIRD-NO TES. 



dusky depths of the woods, hearing which the 

 old plantation negroes used to sing their 

 watermelon rhymes : 



" Plant yo' milions w'en de rain-crow holler, 

 Ef yo' doan dey wont be wo'f er quar' dollar ! 



Ki fo' de rain, 



Ki fo' de crow, 

 Ye orter see how de wa'r milion grow ! " 



It is not so remarkable, after all, that the 

 cuckoo is called Rain-crow throughout the en- 

 tire area of its habitat, for he seems always 

 able to conjure up a shower within a day or 

 two of his first appearance in the spring. I 

 suspect that he holds his solemn voice until 

 the rain is at hand, so as to make a fine artis- 

 tic unity out of it and the depressing gloom of 

 a rising storm-cloud. 



The haw-groves that usually fringe the mar- 

 gin of the mountain glades are the Yellow- 

 bill's favorite resorts when it first reaches the 

 hill-country from the south. Here it meets 

 the blue-jay, the brown-thrush and the cardi- 

 nal-grosbeak, permanent residents and im- 

 placable claimants of all the fruits and insects 

 of these favored spots. 



A glade is a peculiarly Southern woodland 

 feature, not found in perfection north of Ten- 

 nessee, a miniature prairie, surrounded by 

 scrubby trees and groves or thickets of plum 

 and haw-bushes, and covered, as a rule, with 

 wild wire-grass and tufts of sedge. Every one 

 who has spent much time in the wildwoods 

 has noted how few are the small birds inhabit- 

 ing forests of tall thickly-growing timber ; but 

 these glades, set in the midst of immense 

 tracts of pine and oak woods, are oases of 



