ON THE CATTLE RANGES. 8l 



the sights and sounds of the land that is so 

 dear to him. 



Th^s is not a feeling to regret, but it must 

 be taken into account in accepting any esti- 

 mate of bird music — even in considering the 

 reputation of the European skylark and 

 nightingale. To both of these birds I have 

 often listened in their own homes; always 

 with pleasure and admiration, but always with 

 a growing belief that relatively to some other 

 birds they were ranked too high. They are 

 pre-eminently birds with literary associations ; 

 most people take their opinions of them at 

 second-hand, from the poets. 



No one can help liking the lark; it is such 

 a brave, honest, cheery bird, and moreover 

 its song is uttered in the air, and is very long- 

 sustained. But it is by no means a musician 

 of the first rank. The niglitingale is a per- 

 former of a very ditTerent and far higher 

 order ; yet though it is indeed a notable and 

 admirable singer, it is an exaggeration to call 

 'it unequalled. In melody, and above all in 

 that finer, higher melody wliere the chords 

 vibrate with the touch of eternal sorrow, it 

 cannot rank with such singers as the wood 

 thrush and hermit thrush. The serene, 

 ethereal beauty of the hermit's song, rising 

 and falling through the still evening, under 

 the archways of hoary mountain forests that 

 have endured from time everlasting; the 

 golden, leisurely chiming of the wood thrush, 

 sounding on June afternoons, stanza by 

 stanza, through sun-flecked groves of tall 

 hickories, oaks, and chestnuts ; with these 

 there is nothing in the nightingale's song to 

 6 



