142 By Leafy Ways. 



footsore wanderer on the dusty highway pauses and 

 turns to listen to a strain, which carries his thoughts 

 back, perchance, to his own brighter days among green 

 fields and pleasant lanes ; and when at length he turns 

 back to the reality of his dreary tramp, he may even 

 hum a stave of some long-forgotten ballad about the 

 flowers, and the birds, and the spring-time. 



The voices of birds which have no gift of song may 

 be heard the whole year through. Such are the 

 Corvidff the crows. 



The whole race, from the raven to the chough, have 

 voices harsh, monotonous, unmusical ; and their 

 gorgeous relatives in the far East, the birds of Paradise, 

 are no better off. When Dr. Johnson, in ' The Story 

 of a Day,' relates how the ears of Obidah, the son of 

 Abensina, were delighted as he ' pursued his journey 

 through the plains of Hindostan,' by c the morning 

 song of the bird of Paradise,' the statement is open to 

 much the same kind of criticism as that which Cuvier 

 is said to have bestowed on the Academicians' defini- 

 tion of a crab ; for the bird is not found in India ; and 

 its morning song, as described by Mr. Wallace, is 

 ' waivk, wawk, wowk ; wok, wok, wok.' 



There is not much in the woodlands of ' the wood- 

 pecker tapping the hollow beech-tree.' The familiar 

 green species finds his food chiefly on the ground 

 but his voice is often heard a merry voice enough 

 a reveller's laugh, in spite of Buffon's idea that wood- 

 peckers are a melancholy race. 



