I*. Nothing can be more amusing than the whisper of 



this little bird, which seems to be close by, though 



at an hundred yards' distance ; and, when close at 



lil 3 V bl GV your ear, is scarce any louder than when a great way 



off. Had I not been a little acquainted with insects, 



and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet [in April] hatched, 



I should have hardly believed but that it had been a grasshopper 



whispering in the bushes. 



The country people laugh when you tell them that it is the note 

 of a bird. 



It is a most artful creature, skulking in the thicke-t part of a bush, 

 and will sing at a yard distance, provided it be concealed. I was 

 obliged to get a person to go on the other side of the hedge where 

 it haunted ; and then it would run, creeping like a mouse before us 

 for a hundred yards together, through the bottom of the thorns ; 

 yet it would not come into fair sight. 



But in a morning early, and when undisturbed, it sings on the 

 top of a twig, gaping and shivering with its wings. 



It chirps all night in the height of summer. G. W. 



C4 



