MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 15 



blurs came purring toward me, couching his long bill like a 

 lance, his throat sparkling with angry fire, to warn me off 

 from a Missouri-currant whose honey he was sipping. And 

 many a time he has driven me out of a flower-bed. This 

 summer, by the way, a pair of these winged emeralds 

 fastened their mossy acorn-cup upon a bough of the same elm 

 which the orioles had enlivened the year before. We watched 

 all their proceedings from the window through an opera-glass, 

 and saw their two nestlings grow from black needles with a 

 tuft of down at the lower end, till they whirled away on their 

 first short experimental flights. They became strong of wing 

 in a surprisingly short time, and I never saw them or the male 

 bird after, though the female was regular as usual in her 

 visits to our petunias and verbenas. I do not think it 

 ground enough for a generalisation, but in the many times 

 when I watched the old birds feeding their young, the 

 mother always alighted, while the father as uniformly 

 remained upon the wing. 



The bobolinks are generally chance visitors, tinkling 

 through the garden in blossoming-time, but this year, owing 

 to the long rains early in the season, their favourite 

 meadows were flooded, and they were driven to the upland. 

 So I had a pair of them domiciled in my grass-field. The 

 male used to perch in an apple-tree, then in full bloom, and, 

 while I stood perfectly still close by, he would circle away, 

 quivering round the entire field of five acres, with no break 

 in his song, and settle down again among the blossoms, to 

 be hurried away almost immediately by a new rapture of 

 music. He had the volubility of an Italian charlatan at a 

 fair, and, like him, appeared to be proclaiming the merits 

 of some quack remedy. Opodeldoc-opodeldoc-try- Doctor- 

 Lincolris-opodeldoc ! he seemed to repeat over and over 

 again, with a rapidity that would have distanced the deftest- 

 tongued Figaro that ever rattled. I remember Count 

 Gurowski saying once, with that easy superiority of 

 knowledge about this country which is the monopoly of 

 foreigners, that we had no singing birds ! Well, well, Mr. 

 Hepworth Dixon has found the typical America in Oneida 



