APRIL. 83 



F. — No : you are thinking of the Snow Bunting, a bird 

 of a different genus, Emberiza, from which this may be 

 easily distinguished by its colour : it being of a dark slate 

 colour, with a very light, almost white, bill, the contrast of 

 which with the nearly black head, makes it a very marked 

 bird. It is here vulgarly called the Chip-bird. This Frin- 

 gilla does not winter with us ; I believe its name of Snow- 

 bird is derived from its appearing in Pennsylvania about the 

 time of first snow. It is the earliest comer of our spring 

 visitants, usually arriving a day or two before the Song Spar- 

 row. It is of a more elegant shape than most of its tribe. 



C. — How very pleasant it is to listen to the warbling, 

 after the long, dull silence of winter. 



F. — I never hear the song of birds under any circum- 

 stances, without feeling my spirits raised, my heart glad- 

 dened, and filled with delightful emotions. It is not so 

 much the song itself, as the thousand associations of time, 

 place, and circumstances, which are at once conjured up : it 

 brings the verdant meadow, the blossomed hedgerow, or the 

 softened sunbeams playing through the leafy trees, with the 

 happy, gleeful days long gone by. I know not how it is, 

 but on looking back on days past and gone, in which, at the 

 time, sorrow was at least as prominent as joy, — they seem 

 stripped of all that was painful, and the pleasing and happy 

 circumstances connected with them seem to stand out in bold 

 relief, and give the prevailing hue to the picture. In this 

 case, too, * 



" 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view. 

 And clothes the mountain in its azure hue." 



C. — But independently of association, there is something 

 inherently delightful in the warbling of birds ; the sense of 

 hearing is gratified with melody; and it is surely not a little 

 thing to consider it as an instance of the benevolence of God in 



