IN THE FLAT-WOODS. 5 
loggerhead shrike — now close at my elbow, 
now farther away — was practicing his ex- 
tensive vocabulary with perseverance, if not 
with enthusiasm. Like his relative the 
“ reat northern,” though perhaps in a less 
degree, the loggerhead is commonly at an 
extreme, either loquacious or dumb ; as if he 
could not let his moderation be known unto 
any man. Sometimes I fancied him pos- 
sessed with an insane ambition to match the 
mocking-bird in song as well as in personal 
appearance. If so, it is not surprising that 
he should be subject to fits of discourage- 
ment and silence. Aiming at the sun, 
though a good and virtuous exercise, as we 
have all heard, is apt to prove dispiriting to 
sensible marksmen. Crows (fish crows, in 
all probability, but at the time I did not 
know it) uttered strange, hoarse, flat-sound- 
ing caws. Every bird of them must have 
been born without a palate, it seemed to me. 
White-eyed chewinks were at home in the 
dense palmetto scrub, whence they announced 
themselves unmistakably by sharp whistles. 
Now and then one of them mounted a leaf, 
and allowed me to see his pale yellow iris. 
Except for this mark, recognizable almost as 
