THE MOCKING-BIRD. 375 



The Ground-Pigeons tiny, from mountainous nest, 



Came also to visit the King of the West. 



In notes of sad seeming the Blue-Turtle-Dove 



Evinc'd for his mate most affectionate love. 



Of the Passengers, too, many myriads vsrere there, 



And in cloudy-wav'd columns they darken'd the air. 



In a note, page 235, of the same volume, Mr. Southey men- 

 tions Davis's Travels in America^ and the Mocking-bird. A 

 negress was heard lo exclaim, '* Please God Almighty, how 

 sweet that mocking-bird sing ! he never tire." 



"By day and night it sings ahke ; when weary of mocking 

 others the bird takes up its own natural strain, and so joyous 

 a creature is it that it will jump and dance to its own music. 

 The bird is perfectly domestic, the Americans holding itsacred." 

 " Would," exclaims Mr. Southey, " that we had more of these 

 humane prejudices in England — if that word may be applied 

 to a feeling so good in itself and in its tendency." 



The native notes of this bird, Wilson informs us, consist of 

 short expressions of two, three, or, at the most, of five or six 

 syllables, generally interspersed with imitations, and all of them 

 uttered with great emphasis and rapidity, and are continued 

 with undiminished ardour for half an hour or an hour at a time. 

 They have considerable resemblance to those of the Brown- 

 Thrush, another American bird, but may be easily distinguished 

 by their greater rapidity, sweetness, energy, and variety ; both 

 are called in many parts of the United States, Mocking-bird ; 

 but the brown thrush is the French, the other the English mocking- 

 bird. While this bird sings, his expanded wings and tail, his 

 buoyant gaiety of action, arrest the eye as his song irresistibly 

 does the ear; he mounts or descends as his song dies away ; — 

 he bounds aloft with the celerity of an arrow." (Bartram.) 



His imitations are wonderfully like the notes of the birds 

 whom he imitates, so that the sportsmen are frequently deceived 



