PHILLIDA AND CORIDON. 123 



as he ceased, and held his head back to listen, 

 the other answered him ; and so the dialogue 

 went on. Evidently, they were already mated, 

 and were now renewing their mutual vows ; 

 for birds, to their praise be it spoken, believe 

 in courtship after marriage. The day happened 

 to be Sunday, and it did occur to me that pos- 

 sibly this was the woodpeckers' ritual, a kind 

 of High Church service, with antiphonal choirs. 

 But I dismissed the thought ; for, on the whole, 

 the shouting seems more likely to be diagnos- 

 tic, and in spite of his gold-lined wings, I have 

 set the flicker down as almost certainly an old- 

 fashioned Methodist. 



Speaking of courtship after marriage, I am 

 reminded of a spotted sandpiper, whose capers 

 I amused myself with watching, one day last 

 June, on the shore of Saco Lake. As- I caught 

 sight of him, he was straightening himself up, 

 with a pretty, self-conscious air, at the same 

 time spreading his white-edged tail, and calling, 

 Tweet, tweet, tweet. 1 Afterwards he got upon 

 a log, where, with head erect and wings thrown 

 forward and downward, he ran for a yard or 

 two, calling as before. This trick seemed es- 



1 May one who knows nothing of philology venture to inquire 

 whether the very close agreement of this tweet with our sweet 

 (compare also the Anglo-Saxon swete, the Icelandic soetr, and the 

 Sanskrit svad) does not point to a common origin of the Aryan 

 and sandpiper languages ? 



