FAMILY V/reonidx. 



deliberate orator who explains his subject in a few words 

 and then makes a pause for his hearers to reflect upon it. 

 . . . 'You see it you know it do you hear me? 

 do you believe it?'" W. E. D. Scott says of the song, it 

 is "slow, drowsy, and broken. Hesitating as if at a 

 loss for the next series of notes, the pause is long but 

 they are sure to come." But I can not, myself, see any- 

 thing slow or drowsy about it; instead, one would im- 

 agine the choppy sentences indicated that the bird was 

 ever on the qui vive for the unexpected. Wilson has 

 another idea about the music, for he says: "Indeed, on 

 attentively listening for some time to this bird in the full 

 ardor of his song, it requires but little of imagination to 

 fancy that you hear it pronounce these words, ' Tom- 

 kelly . . . whip-tom-kelly !' very distinctly." But after 

 all, from a human point of view, the language of a bird 

 is entirely shaped by our state of mind and environ- 

 ment; therefore, if we separate ourselves as far as possi- 

 ble from such influences, and imagine that the bird is 

 expressing his exuberant feelings by idle chatter as he 

 searches for his breakfast and thinks his wife ought to 

 be by his side to share it I should venture to suggest 

 he said this: " Fat worms . . . plenty to eat . 

 Gobble 'em up . . . they 're sweet. . . . Come dear 

 . . . don't delay . . . Fly this way . . . I 'in h !!" 

 but how do we know that? The fact of the case, how- 

 ever, is not altered by imagined sentences; the mechani- 

 cal rhythm of the Vireo's song is perfectly expressed by 

 a series of rapid beats, or taps, or sentences, or notes 

 one does not care which widely separated. There are 

 two, three, four, or even five notes in a group, and these 

 are given with such rapidity and with such a lack of 

 true pitch, that all semblance of concerted tones or any- 

 thing like tunefulness must not be expected at all ! The 

 bird can not sing a connected song ; his attempt is a sort 

 of musical hash, a potpourri of tones, not melodies. 



Not the best songster in the country on the morning 

 of the rarest day in June can give us a livelier, cheerier 

 roundelay. In the gayest of spirits he sings from early 

 May until the middle of August, and if some hot clay in 

 midsummer you enter the woods, and far up among 



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