CLASS II. AVES: ORDER 2. PASSERES. 



.31 



MOCKING-BIUDS DEFENDING A NEST FROM A RATTLESNAKE. 



birds, are bold and fall, and varied seemingly beyond all limits. They consist of short expi'es- 

 sions of two, three, or, at the most, five or six syllables ; generally interspersed Avith imitations, 

 and all of them uttered with great emphasis and rapidity, and continued, with undiminished ardor, 

 for half an hour or an hour at a time. His expanded wings and tail, glistening with v/hite, and 

 the buoyant gayety of his action, arresting the eye, as his song most irresistibly does the ear, he 

 sweeps round with enthusiastic ecstasy — he mounts and descends as his song swells or dies aAvay ; 

 and, as my friend Mr. Bartram has beautifully expressed it, 'he bounds aloft with the celerity ol' 

 an arrow, as if to recover or recall his very soul, expired in the last elevated strain.' While thus 

 exerting himself, a bystander, destitute of sight, would suppose that the whole feathered tribes 

 had assembled together on a trial of skill, each striving to produce his utmost effect, so perfect 

 are his imitations. He many times deceives the sportsman, and sends him in search of birds that 

 perhaps are not within miles of him, but whose notes lie exactly imitates; even birds themselves 

 are frequently imposed on by this admirable mimic, and are decoyed by the fancied calls of their 

 mates, or dive with precipitation into the depth of thickets, at the scream of what they suppose 

 to be the sparrow-hawk. 



"The mocking-bird loses little of the power and energy of his song by confinement. In his 

 domesticated state, when he commences his cireer of song, it is impossible to stand by uninter- 



