ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 



common bird in all our woods, has a similar strain, 

 which it delivers as it were surreptitiously, and in the 

 most precipitate manner, while on the wing, high 

 above the tree-tops. It is a kind of wood-lark, prac- 

 ticing and rehearsing on the sly. When the modest 

 songster is ready to come out and give all a chance 

 to hear his full and completed strain, the European 

 wood-lark will need to look to his laurels. These 

 two birds are our best warblers, and yet they are 

 probably seldom heard, except by persons who know 

 and admire them. If the two kinglets could also be 

 included in our common New England summer resi- 

 dents, our warbler music would only pale before the 

 song of Philomela herself. The English redstart 

 evidently surpasses ours as a songster, and we have 

 no bird to match the English wood-lark above referred 

 to, which is said to be but little inferior to the sky- 

 lark; but, on the other hand, besides the sparrows 

 and vireos, already mentioned, they have no song- 

 sters to match our oriole, our orchard- starling, our 

 cat-bird, our brown thrasher (only second to the 

 mocking-bird), our chewink, our snow-bird, our cow- 

 bunting, our bobolink, and our yellow-breasted chat. 

 As regards the swallows of the two countries, the ad- 

 vantage is rather on the side of the American. Our 

 chimney-swallow, with his incessant, silvery, rattling 

 chipper, evidently makes more music than the corre- 

 sponding house-swallow of Europe ; while our purple 

 martin is not represented in the Old World avifauna 

 at all. And yet it is probably true that a dweller in 



