126 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



the plaintive singers, the soaring, ecstatic singers, 

 the confident singers, the gushing and voluble singers, 

 and the half-voiced, inarticulate singers. The note 

 of the wood pewee is a human sigh; the chickadee 

 has a call full of unspeakable tenderness and fidelity. 

 There is pride in the song of the tanager, and vanity 

 in that of the catbird. There is something distinctly 

 human about the robin; his is the note of boyhood. 

 I have thoughts that follow the migrating fowls 

 northward and southward, and that go with the sea- 

 birds into the desert of the ocean, lonely and tireless 

 as they. I sympathize with the watchful crow 

 perched yonder on that tree, or walking about the 

 fields. I hurry outdoors when I hear the clarion of 

 the wild gander; his comrade in my heart sends 

 back the call. 



II 



Here comes the cuckoo, the solitary, the joyless, 

 enamored of the privacy of his own thoughts; when 

 did he fly away out of this brain? The cuckoo is 

 one of the famous birds, and is known the world 

 over. He is mentioned in the Bible, and is dis- 

 cussed by Pliny and Aristotle. Jupiter himself 

 once assumed the form of the cuckoo in order to 

 take advantage of Juno's compassion for the bird. 



We have only a reduced and modified cuckoo in 

 this country. Our bird is smaller, and is much more 

 solitary and unsocial. Its color is totally diff'erent 

 from the Old World bird, the latter being speckled, 

 or a kind of dominick, while ours is of the finest 



