WHITE-BANDED MOCKING-BIRD 15 



its melody was greatly enhanced when I could at the 

 same time see the bird, so carried away with rapture 

 does he appear while singing, so many and so beau- 

 tiful are the gestures and motions with which his 

 notes are accompanied. He passes incessantly from 

 bush to bush, scarcely alighting on their summits, 

 and at times dropping down beneath the foliage; 

 then, at intervals, soaring to a height of ajhundred 

 feet above the thicket, with a flight slow as that of a 

 Heron, or mounting suddenly upwards with a wild, 

 hurried, zigzag motion ; then slowly circling down- 

 wards, to sit with tail outspread and the broad 

 glistening white wings expanded, or languidly waved 

 up and down like the wings of some great butterfly 

 an object beautiful to see. 



When I first heard this bird sing I felt convinced 

 that no other feathered songster on the globe could 

 compare with it ; for besides the faculty of repro- 

 ducing the songs of other species, which it possesses 

 in common with the Virginian Mocking-bird, it has 

 a song of its own, which I believed matchless ; and 

 in this belief I was confirmed when, shortly after 

 hearing it, I visited England, and found of how much 

 less account than this Patagonian bird, which no poet 

 has ever praised, were the sweetest of the famed 

 melodists of the Old World, 



