202 SOME TENNESSEE BIRD NOTES. 



utor to the world's knowledge, but a pleasure- 

 seeker ; a little of a savant, and very much 

 of a child ; a favorite of Heaven, whose work 

 is play. No wonder it is commonly said 

 that natural historians are a cheerful set. 



For the supplying of rarities and surprises 

 there are no birds like the warblers. Their 

 pursuit is the very spice of American orni- 

 thology. The multitude of species (Mr. 

 Chapman's "Handbook of the Birds of East- 

 ern North America" enumerates forty-five 

 species and sub-species) is of itself an incal- 

 culable blessing in this respect. No single 

 observer is likely ever to come to the end of 

 them. They do not warble, it must be owned, 

 and few of them have much distinction as 

 singers, the best that I know being the 

 black-throated green and the Kentucky ; but 

 they are elegant and varied in their plumage, 

 with no lack of bright tints, while their 

 extreme activity and their largely arboreal 

 habits render their specific determination and 

 their individual study a work most agreeably 

 difficult and tantalizing. The ornithologist 

 who has seen all the warblers of his own 

 territory, say of New England, and knows 

 them all by their notes, and has found all 



