BIKDS AND BIRDS. 



i. 



THERE is an old legend which one of our poets 

 has made use of about the bird in the brain a 

 legend based, perhaps, upon the human significance of 

 our feathered neighbors. Was not Audubon's brain 

 full of birds, and very lively ones too ? A person 

 who knew him says he looked like a bird himself : 

 keen, alert, wide-eyed. It is not unusual to see the 

 hawk looking out of the human countenance, and one 

 may see or have seen that still nobler bird, the 

 eagle. The song-birds might all have been brooded 

 and hatched in the human heart. They are typical 

 of its highest aspirations, and nearly the whole 

 gamut of human passion and emotion is expressed 

 more or less fully in their varied songs. Among our 

 own birds there is the song of the hermit-thrush for 

 devoutness and religious serenity, that of the wood- 

 thrush for the musing, melodious thoughts of twilight, 

 the song-sparrow's for simple faith and trust, the 

 bobolink's for hilarity and glee, the mourning-dove's 

 for hopeless sorrow, the vireo's for all-day and every- 



