BOYHOOD AND BIKDS. 65 



the fence alongside the public road, or in fifty other places 

 just as public. But this is the mocking bird under different 

 circumstances, if not a very different species of which I now 

 speak. It is of the hardy pioneer in a new country, subject 

 to the dangers and annoyances, which I have been describ- 

 ing, and compelled to seek safety in the exercise of the ex- 

 tremest caution and subtlest sagacity of which it may be pos- 

 sessed, of which we are giving you the characteristics, not 

 the smaller and feebler native of the emasculating orange- 

 groves, where it has, from time immemorial, been protected 

 and indeed domesticated, as our sparrows are. We tell you 

 of a bird of lighter plumage, of nearly one-third larger size and 

 weight, possessing a power of utterance superior in volume to 

 the feeble Southerner, as are the notes of the clarion to the fife ! 



We are describing a conqueror, as well as a discov- 

 erer ; haughty, strong, audacious, cunning, adventurous 

 and sagacious, whose stormy and impetuous voice bids 

 all living things be mute and listen to his song of Earth ? 

 triumphing over silence ; whose hardy frame trembles not 

 when the North-wind cometh, but who listeneth on his toss- 

 ing perch, that he may mock its piping when the Summer 

 comes, and scare the Tropic-flame bird with the icy notes of 

 Winter ; not of a monotonous, timid singer that fatigues the 

 ear with running over a short gamut of imitations, the 

 sounds of which can be distinguished a hundred yards or so, 

 but of a singer, whose notes are infinitely various, and may be 

 heard with thrillling distinctesss over a mile. It is, in a 

 word, of the Mocking Bird of Kentucky and the Middle States 

 that we speak, and not of the Southern Mocking Bird, which 

 is, I believe I can prove conclusively, a different species. 



I know I am running a great risk in this assertion, but I 

 am confident of being able to maintain, that the bird of Ken- 

 tucky and the Middle States is as different from the Mock- 

 ing Bird of Louisiana as the stern, hardy, and giant-limbed 

 Pioneer, who conquered the red-man of the dark and 

 bloody ground, was a different man from the small and 



5 



