92 BIRD-LAND ECHOES. 



common to all birds at this joyous season, there is 

 melody, exquisite melody, in the song that it pours 

 forth on the flower-scented air and sends echoing 

 through the tangled thickets and over the weedy 

 meadows. Is this wonderful song learned in the 

 south, where the mocking-bird may be the teacher, 

 and as the weeks roll by gradually forgotten? 

 During May I have heard the cat-birds sing such a 

 marvellous series of melodious notes that it seemed 

 as if some wonderful songsters of another land were 

 disguised in their plumage. When the orchard is as 

 fairy-land in pink and white array the cat-bird enters 

 into the spirit of the scene and, moved by the mag- 

 nificence of the stage upon which it treads, sings with 

 an exultation that magnifies the sweetness of every 

 note it utters. Not a trace of discord now. The 

 world has been perfected, so the bird believes, and 

 every thought and shade of feeling is turned to 

 music. 



Why called cat-bird ? Is it feline in disposition ? 

 By no means. Then why by name ? Therein lies the 

 secret of the bird's misfortune, for the prejudice against 

 it is as wide-spread as the geographical range of the 

 bird, and is, I fear, ineradicable. Unfounded preju- 

 dices are always the deepest rooted and draw additional 

 vitality from every attacking object. It might pos- 

 sibly be much better to say nothing about the matter, 

 and as years roll by let the ill feeling die of neglect, 

 as often happens when the world moves on as if it had 

 never existed. But, keeping closer to our subject, we 

 find or think we do that after the nesting is over 



