SOME MINOR SONG-BIRDS. 157 



habitually slept in a hammock while outing in 

 the Southern woods, and no words can convey 

 the singularly delicious sense of calm and 

 quiet luxury which comes of hearing, far in the 

 solemn night, the low, liquid, drowsy nocturne 

 of one or both of these charming musicians ! 



The brown-thrush has not had his full meed 

 of praise from our poets. As a conventional 

 figure, the nightingale a bird quite unknown 

 to Americans has retained its place on the 

 palette of our word-painters, much to the hurt 

 of our poetry. In fact, I fancy I can go 

 through American poetry and point out every 

 passage wherein an author has alluded to a 

 bird that he has never seen. How can any one 

 describe the fragrance of sweet-clover without 

 having it in his nostrils at the moment of writ- 

 ing ? How can I write sincerely about the song 

 of the brown-thrush or the cat-bird, if I have 

 not the stimulus of that song in my brain ? 



In the far-reaching tangles of wild grape- 

 vines, found here and there in the beautiful 

 little valleys of North Georgia, the brown- 

 thrushes sing to the perfection of their powers 

 from the early days of April until the first of 

 June ; that is, they make the vine-masses their 

 home, and do their melodious gushing on the 

 very topmost boughs of the highest trees. 

 This is not over-statement ; it is one of the 

 most striking sights of the Southern woods to 

 see a brown-thrush at about sunrise, sitting on 

 the apex of the cone-shaped top of a giant 

 pine-tree, whilst its song falls in a shower of 

 fragmentary and ecstatic trills and quavers 

 over all the surrounding woods. This per- 

 formance often extends over the space of an 

 hour or more, with but slight intermissions. 



