A SUMMER AT HOME. 195 



I joined with him heartily, it was all so beautiful ; yet 

 my thoughts were with the many birds, now silenced by 

 the rain. To this silence I referred when his eloquence 

 was checked, and I prophesied that the robin would 

 break forth into song the moment the sun struggled 

 through the parting clouds. It was not so : a song-spar- 

 row first and then the robin ; but the reverse is true in 

 almost every instance. Soon the grcenlets, redstarts, 

 and small finches were all in song. 



" What are they saying ?" I asked. 



" Singing a hymn, and properly too, seeing it is Sun- 

 day," he replied. 



" Would they not sing the same song, were it Mon- 

 day?" I asked. 



" Certainly ; these birds do not assume to be, on Sun- 

 day, what they are not through the week," my friend 

 remarked with much earnestness ; and then added, " and 

 now they are off for the meadows, all rosy with clover ; 

 let us follow;" and we did. 



Botanists are not such slow fellows after all. 



As we walked, we fell to talking about expressing 

 bird-notes by syllables, and voted it could not be done ; 

 yet, strangely enough, persisted in trying whenever a 

 bird chirped or sang near by. Finally, finding we ap- 

 peared to be differently impressed by the notes of the 

 same bird, we undertook to express these songs in writ- 

 ing and then compare. 



One chirping sparrow, he remarked, said " phit." I 

 had it written " tweet." To him there was no " e " 

 sound, to me no short "i," in the bird's utterance. 

 When it came to longer songs, which required several 



