IN THE FLAT-WOODS. 5 



loggerhead shrike now close at my elbow, 

 now farther away was practicing his ex- 

 tensive vocabulary with perseverance, if not 

 with enthusiasm. Like his relative the 

 " great northern," though perhaps in a less 

 degree, the loggerhead is commonly at an 

 extreme, either loquacious or dumb ; as if he 

 could not let his moderation be known unto 

 any man. Sometimes I fancied him pos- 

 sessed with an insane ambition to match the 

 mocking-bird in song as well as in personal 

 appearance. If so, it is not surprising that 

 he should be subject to fits of discourage- 

 ment and silence. Aiming at the sun, 

 though a good and virtuous exercise, as we 

 have all heard, is apt to prove dispiriting to 

 sensible marksmen. Crows (fish crows, in 

 all probability, but at the time I did not 

 know it) uttered strange, hoarse, flat-sound- 

 ing caws. Every bird of them must have 

 been born without a palate, it seemed to me. 

 White-eyed chewinks were at home in the 

 dense palmetto scrub, whence they announced 

 themselves unmistakably by sharp whistles. 

 Now and then one of them mounted a leaf, 

 and allowed me to see his pale yellow iris. 

 Except for this mark, recognizable almost as 



