14 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 



well, Mr. Hepworth Dixon has found the typical America in 

 Oneida and Salt Lake City. Of course, an intelligent Euro 

 pean is the best judge of these matters. The truth is there 

 are more singing-birds in Europe because there are fewer 

 forests. These songsters love the neighbourhood of man 

 because hawks and owls are rarer, while their own food is 

 more abundant. Most people seem to think, the more trees 

 the more birds. Even Chateaubriand, who first tried the 

 primitive-forest-cure, and whose description of the wilderness 

 in its imaginative effects is unmatched, fancies the people 

 of the air singing their hymns to him. So far as my own 

 observation goes, the farther one penetrates the sombre soli 

 tudes of the woods, the more seldom does he hear the voice 

 of any singing-bird. In spite of Chateaubriand s minuteness 

 of detail, in spite of that marvellous reverberation of the de 

 crepit tree falling of its own weight, which he was the first to 

 notice, I cannot help doubting whether he made his way very 

 deep into the wilderness. At any rate, in a letter to Fon- 

 tanes, written in 1804, he speaks of mes chevaux paissant d 

 quelque distance. To be sure Chateaubriand was apt to 

 mount the high horse, and this may have been but an after 

 thought of the grand seigneur, but certainly one would not 

 make much headway on horseback toward the druid fast 

 nesses of the primeval pine. 



The bobolinks build in considerable numbers in a meadow 

 within a quarter of a mile of us. A houseless lane passes 

 through the midst of their camp, and in clear westerly 

 weather, at the right season, one may hear a score of them 

 singing at once. When they are breeding, if I chance to 

 pass, one of the male birds always accompanies me like a 

 constable, flitting from post to post of the rail-fence, with a 

 short note of reproof continually repeated, till I am fairly out 

 of the neighbourhood. Then he will swing away into the air 

 and run down the wind, gurgling music without stint over 

 the unheeding tussocks of meadow-grass and dark clumps of 

 bulrushes that mark his domain. 



We have no bird whose song will match the nightin 

 gale s in compass, none whose note is so rich as that of the 

 European blackbird; but for mere rapture I have never 

 heard the bobolink s rival. But his opera-season is a short 

 one. The ground and tree sparrows are our most constant 

 performers. It is now late in August, and one of the latter 



