40 THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS. 



eral successive days in the dense part of this 

 next-door wood, flitting noiselessly about, 

 very grave and silent, as if doing penance 

 for some violation of the code of honor. By 

 many gentle, indirect approaches, I per- 

 ceived that part of his tail-feathers were un- 

 developed. The sylvan prince could not 

 think of returning to court in this plight, 

 and so, amid the falling leaves and cold 

 rains of autumn, was patiently biding his 

 time. 



The soft, mellow flute of the veery fills a 

 place in the chorus of the woods that the 

 song of the vesper-sparrow fills in the chorus 

 of the fields. It has the nightingale's habit 

 of singing in the twilight, as indeed have 

 all our thrushes. Walk out toward the 

 forest in the warm twilight of a June day, 

 and when fifty rods distant you will hear 

 their soft, reverberating notes, rising from a 

 dozen different throats. 



It is one of the simplest strains to be 

 heard, as simple as the curve in form, de- 

 lighting from the pure element of harmony 

 and beauty it contains, and not from any 

 novel or fantastic modulation of it, thus 

 contrasting strongly with such rollicking, 

 hilarious songsters as the bobolink, in whom 



