140 By Leafy Ways. 



beech-tree, he will pour his wonderful music by the 

 hour together a soft, delicious, perfect piece of 

 melody. 



He has tuneful kinsmen, too. Who does not love 

 to listen to the blackbird's few mellow bars in the 

 evening twilight? He has a critical taste for straw- 

 berries, to be sure, and he is a parlous fellow to be left 

 alone in a cherry-tree ; but he is a noble minstrel, and 

 he earns his wages. 



The wild song of the missel-thrush again is a wel- 

 come addition to the orchestra ; and the flyfisher, who 

 is wise enough to see in him a friend, and not a foe, 

 would be loath to lose, from lonely streams, the 

 company and the melody of the sprightly dipper. 



The nightingale, at his best, is a superb and peerless 

 minstrel. But the songster of the Surrey lanes and 

 the pleasant Hertfordshire woodlands might be of 

 another race altogether from his brother in the west. 

 In the combes that nestle among the broken ramparts 

 of the Mendips, the nightingale is usually but a 

 capricious and feeble performer. There is not the 

 keen rivalry which in the home counties brings the 

 finest singers to the front. He is on the Marches of 

 his dominions too, and perhaps he feels himself a 

 stranger, and his heart is otherwhere. 



But if the nightingale has no peer, he has some 

 musical companions, who, for the most part, have gone 

 with him now in the track of the summer. 



Listen on the edge of some quiet coppice when the 



