18 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 



notice, I cannot help doubting whether he made his way 

 very deep into the wilderness. At any rate, in a letter 

 to Fontanes, written in 1804, he speaks of mes chevaux 

 paissant a quelque distance. To be sure Chateaubriand 

 was apt to mount the high horse, and this may have 

 been but an afterthought of the grand seigneur, but 

 certainly one would not make much headway on horse- 

 back toward the druid fastnesses of the primaeval 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 re- 

 proof continually repeated, till I am fairly out of the 

 neighborhood. 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 sings every day and all 

 day long in the garden. Till within a fortnight, a pair 

 of indigo-birds would keep up their lively duo for an 

 hour together. While I write, I hear an oriole gay as 

 in June, and the plaintive may-be of the goldfinch tells 

 me he is stealing my lettuce-seeds. I know not what 

 the experience of others may have been, but the only 

 bird I have ever heard sing in the night has been the 



