WARBLERS. 351 



tidings from afar intimates that the plains of Africa are 

 burned up with drought, or that the season of growth is 

 advancing in the south of Europe, and will speedily reach us. 

 They are visitants from afar, but they are not strangers ; 

 they are our own native birds, that retired during winter, 

 leaving the groves, the fields, and the river banks, to other 

 races, driven from our own wilds, or from more inclement 

 regions further to the north, so that in the season of penury 

 there might be plenty for those whose structure and powers 

 did not adapt them for flights so far to the southward ; and 

 now, when the time of plenty is again coming round, and 

 vegetation is approaching that state in which there is danger 

 to it from those creatures on which birds feed, they return to 

 resume those labours which are alike useful, and those songs 

 which are alike cheering, to themselves and to us. 



They come also to be our near associates, when those that 

 we had with us in the winter are beginning to seek their 

 way to the woods and the wilds. All the warblers love 

 shade and shelter; but with few exceptions, they seek these 

 among the cultivated lands, or close on their margins. Some 

 are in the grove, others in the coppice; some by the sedgy 

 stream, or the reedy pool, and others in the brake ; but they 

 are not found on the wide waste, or in the upland forest ; and 

 generally speaking, man always partakes in the benefit of 

 their labours, and may hear the melody of their notes. The 

 spaces over which they extend vary, and so do the characters 

 of those places which they most frequent ; but it is a general 

 rule, that where the air is most pure, and the soil most 

 fertile, and in the highest state of cultivation, there the war- 

 blers are found, in the greatest variety of species, and the 

 greatest number of individuals. Even their voices partake 

 of the characters of their localities. The nightingale sings 

 more sweetly over the gravel in Surrey, than over the clay 

 in Middlesex. 



