MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 17 



owing to the long rains early in the season, their favorite 

 meadows were flooded, and they were driven to the up 

 land. 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-Lincolns-opodel- 

 doc ! 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 and 

 Salt Lake City. Of course, an intelligent European 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 neighborhood 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 solitudes of the woods, the 

 more seldom does he hear the voice of any singing-bird. 

 Jn spite of Chateaubriand's minuteness of detail, in spite 

 of that marvellous reverberation of the decrepit tree 

 falling of its own weight, which he was the first t<? 



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