GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS 405 



partridge still bursts away. The silent, dry, almost 

 leafless, certainly fruitless woods. You wonder what 

 cheer that bird can find in them. The partridge bursts 

 away from the foot of a shrub oak like its own dry fruit, 

 immortal bird ! This sound still startles us. 



Jan. 7, 1851. The snow is sixteen inches deep at 

 least, but it is a mild and genial afternoon, as if it were 

 the beginning of a January thaw. Take away the snow 

 and it would not be winter but like many days in the 

 fall. The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the 

 jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are of tener heard. 



June 13, 1851. I hear, just as the night sets in, faint 

 notes from time to time from some sparrow (?) falling 

 asleep, — a vesper hymn, — and later, in the woods, the 

 chuckling, rattling sound of some unseen bird on the 

 near trees. The nighthawk booms wide awake. 



June 14, 1851. Now the sun is fairly gone, I hear 

 tlie dreaming frog,* and the whip-poor-will from some 

 darker wood, — it is not far from eight, — and the 

 cuckoo. The song sparrows sing quite briskly among 

 the willows, as if it were spring again, and the black- 

 bird's harsher note resounds over the meadows, and the 

 veery's comes up from the wood. 



In Conant's orchard I hear the faint cricket-like sons: 

 of a sparrow saying its vespers, as if it were a link be- 

 tween the cricket and the bird. The robin sings now, 

 though the moon shines silverly, and the veery jingles 

 its trill. 



^ Toad ? [Thoreau afterwards learned that his " dreaming frogs " 

 were toads. In this case it was probably Fowler's toad.] 



