THE BLACKCAP. 149 



sings from its reeds in the marsh, or the water 

 ouzel is in full song by the banks where the silent 

 waters are gliding onward to the sea. Good orni- 

 thologists, when listening to the strains of the 

 blackcap, at night, have mistaken them for those 

 of the nightingale ; and Mr. Dovaston once heard 

 one, at night, singing so like that bird, that he 

 asks whether it may not be possible that tliis 

 blackcap, in his passage through the south of 

 England, resting in the night, had heard the 

 nightingale sing, and retained in its memory a 

 portion of the song. Our blackcap is, indeed, often 

 said to be a mocking-bird, from its peculiar power 

 of imitating tlie strains of other songsters. It will 

 give so exactly those of the thrush and swallow, 

 that were the bird not seen, the most practised car 

 might be misled by the deception. Mr. Dovaston, 

 who calls it tlie " Burns of birds," remarks that lie 

 has not only a perfectly original style of his own, 

 but, like a poet of all genius, he sometimes hardly 

 knows what he is about, and has, regardless of 

 Aristotle and the unities, neither beginning, middle, 

 nor end ; while after the highest flights, he some- 

 times suddenly breaks off into his chat, chat, chat, 

 of homeliest prose. 



