IMPRESSIONS OF SOME ENGLISH BIRDS 139 



of British song-birds; he denies it mellowness and 

 plaintiveness, and makes it high only in sprightli- 

 ness, a fact that discredits his whole table. He 

 makes the thrush and blackbird equal in the two 

 qualities first named, which is equally wide of the 

 mark. 



The English robin is a better songster than I 

 expected to find him. The poets and writers have 

 not done him justice. He is of the royal line of 

 the nightingale, and inherits some of the qualities 

 of that famous bird. His favorite hour for singing 

 is the gloaming, and I used to hear him the last of 

 all. His song is peculiar, jerky, and spasmodic, 

 but abounds in the purest and most piercing tones 

 to be heard, piercing from their smoothness, in- 

 tensity, and fullness of articulation; rapid and 

 crowded at one moment, as if some barrier had sud- 

 denly given way, then as suddenly pausing, and 

 scintillating at intervals, bright, tapering shafts of 

 sound. It stops and hesitates, and blurts out its 

 notes like a stammerer; but when they do come 

 they are marvelously clear and pure. I have heard 

 green hickory branches thrown into a fierce blaze 

 jet out the same fine, intense, musical sounds on 

 the escape of the imprisoned vapors in the hard 

 wood as characterize the robin's song. 



One misses along English fields and highways 

 the tender music furnished at home by our spar- 

 rows, and in the woods and groves the plaintive 

 cries of our pewees and the cheerful soliloquy of 

 our red-eyed vireo. The English sparrows and 



