WALKS ABOUT TALLAHASSEE. 235 



listened again, though I could no longer be 

 said to feel in doubt. A long time I waited. 

 Again and again the birds sang, and at last 

 I discovered one of them perched at the top 

 of the oak, tossing back his head and war- 

 bling a white-crowned sparrow: the one 

 regular Massachusetts migrant which I had 

 often seen, but had never heard utter a 

 sound. 



The strain opens with smooth, sweet notes 

 almost exactly like the introductory syllables 

 of the vesper sparrow. Then the tone 

 changes, and the remainder of the song is in 

 something like the pleasingly hoarse voice of 

 a prairie warbler, or a black-throated green. 

 It is soft and very pretty ; not so perfect a 

 piece of art as the vesper sparrow's tune, 

 few bird-songs are, but taking for its very 

 oddity, and at the same time tender and 

 sweet. More than one writer has described 

 it as resembling the song of the white-throat. 

 Even Minot, who in general was the most 

 painstaking and accurate of observers, as he 

 is one of the most interesting of our syste- 

 matic writers, says that the two songs are 

 " almost exactly " alike. There could be no 

 better example of the fallibility which at- 



