WALKS ABOUT TALLAHASSEE. 235 
listened again, though I could no longer be 
said to feel in doubt. A long time I waited. 
Again and again the birds sang, and at last 
I discovered one of them perched at the top 
of the oak, tossing back his head and war- 
bling —a white-crowned sparrow: the one 
regular Massachusetts migrant which I had 
often seen, but had never heard utter a 
sound. 
The strain opens with smooth, sweet notes 
almost exactly like the introductory syllables 
of the vesper sparrow. Then the tone 
changes, and the remainder of the song is in 
something like the pleasingly hoarse voice of 
a prairie warbler, or a black-throated green. 
It is soft and very pretty; not so perfect a 
piece of art as the vesper sparrow’s tune, — 
few bird-songs are,— but taking for its very 
oddity, and at the same time tender and 
sweet. More than one writer has described 
it as resembling the song of the white-throat. 
Even Minot, who in general was the most 
painstaking and accurate of observers, as he 
is one of the most interesting of our syste- 
matic writers, says that the two songs are 
‘almost exactly ” alike. There could be no 
better example of the fallibility which at- 
