IMPRESSIONS OF SOME ENGLISH BIRDS. 151 



ton marks the wren far too low in his table of the 

 comparative merit of British song-birds ; he denies it 

 mellowness and plaintiveness, and makes it high only 

 in sprightliness, a fact that discredits his whole table. 

 He makes the thrush and blackbird equal in the two 

 qualities first named, which is equally wide of the 

 mark. 



The English robin is a better songster than I ex- 

 pected to find him. The poets and writers have not 

 done him justice. He is of the royal line of the 

 nightingale, and inherits some of the qualities of that 

 famous bird. His favorite hour for singing is the 

 gloaming, and I used to hear him the last of all. 

 His song is peculiar, jerky, and spasmodic, but abounds 

 in the purest and most piercing tones to be heard, 

 piercing from their smoothness, intensity, and full- 

 ness of articulation ; rapid and crowded at one mo- 

 ment, as if some barrier had suddenly given way, then 

 as suddenly pausing, and scintillating ut intervals, 

 bright, tapering shafts of sound. It stops and hesi- 

 tates, and blurts out its notes like a stammerer ; but 

 when they do come they are marvelously clear and 

 pure. I have heard green hickory branches thrown 

 into a fierce blaze jet out the same fine, intense, mu- 

 sical sounds on the escape of the imprisoned vapors 

 in the hard wood as characterize the robin's song. 



One misses along English fields and highways the 

 tender music furnished at home by our sparrows, and 

 in the woods and groves the plaintive cries of our 

 pewees and the cheerful soliloquy of our red-eyed 



