OCTOBER 107 



into darkness, remains individualized among all 

 birds. That summer tanager we saw or dreamed 

 we saw, once and once only, has become poetic, a 

 romantic myth, a disembodied spirit we would not 

 wish to clothe in flesh and feathers. Birds of the 

 Orchard, Birds of the Seashore, and Birds of My 

 Boyhood — and yours, whose heart has not yet 

 been entirely silenced by hours in laboratory, 

 classroom, library, or office. The showy orchis, 

 also, found but once in the familiar woodland, and 

 never seen since anywhere, living or dead! Let 

 some few such memories remain — haunting, frag- 

 mentary memories never to be rebuked, and never 

 to pass into the clear daylight of science. 



The mockingbird, however, is no mere dream in 

 the annals of American nature-lore. As early as 

 1690, in spite of the fact that the nightingale and 

 skylark continued to be favorite birds with Amer- 

 ican poets, a schoolmaster of Pennsylvania wrote 

 — the bird itself a polyglot, why not in Latin? — 



Hie avis est quaedam dulci celeberrima voce 

 Quae variare sonos usque canendo solet. 



The ringing hexameters of Evangeline must be 

 familiar to many who never heard the bird : 



Then from a neighboring thicket the mockingbird, wild- 

 est of singers, 



S\nnging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the 

 water, 



