MINOR SONGSTERS. 179 



cording to the outward appearance, in ornithol- 

 ogy as in other matters ; and I have heard that 

 it is only those who are foolish as well as igno- 

 rant who indulge in off-hand criticisms of wiser 

 men's conclusions. So let us call the towhee a 

 finch, and say no more about it. 



But whatever his lineage, it is plain that the 

 chewink is not a bird to be governed very strictly 

 by the traditions of the fathers. His usual song 

 is characteristic and pretty, yet he is so far 

 from being satisfied with it that he varies it con- 

 tinually and in many ways, some of them sadly 

 puzzling to the student who is set upon telling 

 all the birds by their voices. I remember well 

 enough the morning I was inveigled through the 

 wet grass of two pastures and that just as I 

 was shod for the city by a wonderfully for- 

 eign note, which filled me with lively anticipa- 

 tions of a new bird, but which turned out to be 

 the work of a most innocent-looking towhee. It 

 was perhaps this same bird, or his brother, whom 

 I one day heard throwing in between his cus- 

 tomary cherawinks a profusion of staccato notes 

 of widely varying pitch, together with little vol- 

 leys of tinkling sounds such as his every-day 

 song concludes with. This medley was not laugh- 

 able, like the chat's, which it suggested, but it 

 had the same abrupt, fragmentary, and promis- 

 cuous character. All in all, it was what I never 



