BIRD NOTES. 69 



which he quotes from the tree-top singer, while further incontest- 

 able evidence of the bird's orthodoxy is given in another portion 

 of this volume. 



What else our ornithological bird is doing up there in the 

 tree -top is shown in the following from Nuttall: "For all the 

 while that this chorus enchants the hearer, the singer is casually 

 hopping from spray to spray in quest of his active or crawling 

 prey; and if a cessation occurs in his untiring lay, it is occa- 

 sioned by the caterpillar or fly he has just captured" which re- 

 calls a bonmot in relation to the bird which I once heard from 

 Mr. Beecher, who remarked to me upon his piazza at " Bosco- 

 bel," while his fancy hovered aloft in the maples, "That little fel- 

 low has found a land of plenty up there, and he says grace like 

 a little Christian at every mouthful." 



The world had long been wondering what tidings lay within 

 the robin's song that should carry the same joyous message to 

 all, until an inspired poet told us. Were we, then, deaf never to 

 have heard those words before : " Cheerily, cheer up ! cheer up ! 

 Cheerily, cheerily, cheer up!" It is not every one of our birds, 

 however, that has found such an interpreter as he who has given 

 us this most beautiful and perfect onomatopoeia ; but there are 

 many songs which, whether as sympathetically rendered or not, 

 have nevertheless been so aptly paraphrased as to afford their 

 ready recognition. There is the brown thrasher, for instance, 

 whose stray notes reach our ears from the grassy road yonder. In 

 Concord, we learn, he was wont to superintend the spring planting 

 of beans, perhaps with lively interest and counsel. " Drop it, 

 drop it; cover it up, cover it up; pull it up, pull it up, pull it up!" 

 in perfect Anglo-Saxon. Over the border in Connecticut, I can 

 vouch for his somewhat similar strain, while farmers everywhere 

 will recognize that faithful voice of the pasture, that curt and com- 

 prehensive summons from the tangled lane, always associated with 

 the brown furrows of the cornfield and the time of blooming dog- 

 woods : 



"Shuck it, shuck it; sow at, sow it; 

 Plough it, plough it ; hoe it, hoe it !" 



