46 NATURE IN ACADIE. 



It was late in the afternoon as I returned home- 

 ward through the woods near the lake at Three Mile 

 House, and quite a number of robins were singing in 

 the tree-tops at the outskirts of the woods. Their song 

 is loud and possessed of little variation, but still attrac- 

 tive ; it is certainly inferior in mellowness and compass 

 of voice to that of the vocalist's Old World cousin, the 

 blackbird. The song may be readily syllabled as gie-it- 

 up, gie-it-up, gie-it-up, pilly, pilly, but it is strange what 

 an amount of rivalry and assertion it conveys, for the 

 birds will sing one against the other with a surprising 

 vehemence and vigour for an hour at a time. 



In a shallow grass-grown pond which I passed before 

 leaving the woods the frogs were holding a merry con- 

 cert. Heard in the twilight, in the stillness of the forest, 

 there is something plaintive in their clear and shrill 

 peet, peet, uttered at first by one only and being every- 

 time answered by another and another, until all join in 

 one swelling chorus 



" And anon a thousand whistles 

 Answered over all the fen-land." 



