198 FOOT-PATHS. 



her mail ; but instead of a short and pleasant cut 

 across the fields, as there would have been in Eng- 

 land, she was obliged to take the highway and face 

 the dust and the mud and the staring people in their 

 carriages. 



She complained, also, of the absence of bird voices 

 so silent the fields and groves and orchards were 

 compared with what she had been used to at home. 

 The most noticeable midsummer sound everywhere 

 was the shrill, brassy crescendo of the locust. 



All this is unquestionably true. There is far less 

 bird music here than in England, except possibly in 

 May and June, though if the first impressions of the 

 Duke of Argyle are to be trusted, there is much less 

 even then. The duke says : " Although I was in 

 the woods and fields of Canada and of the States in 

 the richest moments of the spring, I heard little 

 of that burst of song which in England comes from 

 the blackcap and the garden warbler, and the white- 

 throat, and the reed warbler, and the common wren, 

 and (locally) from the nightingale." Our birds are 

 more withdrawn than the English, and their notes 

 more plaintive and intermittent. Yet there are a 

 few days here early in May, when the house-wren, 

 the oriole, the orchard starling, the kingbird, the 

 bobolink, and the wood-thrush, first arrive, that are 

 BO full of music, especially in the morning, that one 

 is loath to believe there is anything fuller or finer 

 even in England. As walkers and lovers of rural 

 scenes and pastimes we do not approach our British 



