THE OLD SUGAR MILL. 109 
what shall a man trust, if not his own eyes 
and ears, especially when each confirms the 
other? Two days afterward, nevertheless, 
I began to doubt. I heard a grackle “ sing ”’ 
in the manner just described, wing-beats and 
all, while flying from one tree to another; 
and later still, in a country where boat-tailed 
erackles were an every-day sight near the 
heart of the village, ] more than once saw 
them produce the sounds in question with- 
out any perceptible movement of the wings, 
and furthermore, their mandibles could be 
seen moving in time with the beats. So 
hard is it to be sure of a thing, even when 
you see it and hear it. 
““Oh yes,” some sharp-witted reader will 
say, “you saw the wings flapping, — beat- 
ing time,—and so you imagined that the 
sounds were like wing-beats.”’ But for once 
the sharp-witted reader is in the wrong. 
The resemblance is not imaginary. Mr. F. 
M. Chapman, in A List of Birds Observed 
at Gainesville, Florida,! says of the boat- 
tailed grackle (Quiscalus major): “ A sin- 
gular note of this species greatly resembles 
the flapping of wings, as of a coot tripping 
1 The Auk, vol. v. p. 278. 
