160 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



tirme to sing until dark. The voice of the little wood- 

 thrush is the last to be heard ; and when his notes have 

 ceased, the night may be said to have commenced; 

 though even after this time, the sweet notes of the 

 grassfinch, (the bush-sparrow,) are occasionally poured 

 out from some station in the open fields. But in our 

 woods, at this season, silence does not immediately 

 ensue. A restlessness prevails among the feathered 

 tribes, as if they were yet unprepared to renounce the 

 pleasures of the day. At intervals, for the space of an 

 hour after dusk, an occasional note of complaint is 

 heard in the thicket from different birds, a shrill chirp 

 from some of the little sylvias, the mewing of the cat 

 bird among the shrubbery, or the querulous smack of the 

 red-thrush. 



Suddenly, when the stillness of the night has become 

 fully realized, the note of the whippoorwill resounds 

 through the forest, with a solemn accent that pleasantly 

 harmonizes with silence and darkness. There is some 

 thing in his monotonous song that is disagreeable to 

 many, who attribute to it a certain power of announc 

 ing a coming disaster. Its peculiar measured cadence, 

 and the mystery that is connected with the bird, cause 

 his notes to seem like the utterance of some prophetic 

 message ; and it is said that he often tells a tale of sad 

 ness that will come before the falling of the leaf. But 

 to those who assign the bird no oracular powers, and 

 regard him only as one of the innocent tenants of the 

 grove, his notes are musical and affecting. The song 

 of the whippoorwill is a poor substitute for that of the 

 nightingale ; but the melancholy it inspires is just suffi 

 cient to be an agreeable emotion, and adds impressive- 

 ness to the silent scenes around us. 



Sometimes, for several minutes, hardly a voice from 



