170 ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 



too, were a pair of bluebirds, noticeable for 

 their rarity, and for the wonderful color 

 a shade deeper than is ever seen at the 

 North, I think of the male's blue coat. 

 In a small thicket in the hollow beside the 

 road were noisy white-eyed vireos, a ruby- 

 crowned kinglet, a tiny thing that within 

 a month would be singing in Canada, or 

 beyond, an unseen wood pewee, and (also 

 unseen) a hermit thrush, one of perhaps 

 twenty solitary individuals that I found 

 scattered about the woods in the course of 

 my journeyings. Not one of them sang a 

 note. Probably they did not know that 

 there was a Yankee in Florida who in 

 some moods, at least would have given 

 more for a dozen bars of hermit thrush mu- 

 sic than for a day and a night of the mock- 

 ing-bird's medley. Not that I mean to dis- 

 parage the great Southern performer ; as a 

 vocalist he is so far beyond the hermit thrush 

 as to render a comparison absurd ; but what 

 I love is a singer, a voice to reach the soul. 

 An old Tallahassee negro, near the " white 

 Norman school," - so he called it, hit off 

 the mocking-bird pretty well. I had called 

 his attention to one singing in an adjacent 



