AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 101 



conduct during the scene. This, of course, the bird never indulges in, 

 in captivity and perhaps not north of the Delaware Valley. Clarence 

 Hawkes' beautiful lines to the skylark are somewhat descriptive: 



Upward, upward, upward mounting, 

 Like an arrow from a bow, 

 Singing ever as the fountain 

 When the scented breezes blow." 



The author of "By-ways and Bird Notes," Maurice Thompson, des- 

 cribed this mounting song, wherein "The songster begins on the low- 

 est branch of a tree and appears literally to mount or rise on its music 

 from bough to bough, until the highest spray of the top is reached 

 where it will sit for many minutes, flinging upon the air an ecstatic 

 stream of almost infinitely varied vocalization. But he who has not 

 heard the 'dropping song' has not discovered the possibility of the 

 Mockingbird's voice. I have never found any note of this extremely inter- 

 esting habit of the bird by any ornithologist, a habit, which is, I suspect, 

 occasional, and connected with the most tender part of the mating seas- 

 on. It is in a measure the reverse of the 'mounting song,' beginning 

 where the latter leaves off. My attention was first called to this in- 

 teresting performance by an aged negro man, who cried out one morn- 

 ing, as a strangely rhapsodic burst of music rang from a tree near our 

 camp: — "Lis'n, mars', lis'n, dar he's a-drop'n, he's a drop'n, show's 

 yo' bo'n, he's a-droppin!" The bird was fluttering in a trembling, pe- 

 culiar way, with its wings half spread and its feathers puffed out. 

 Almost immediately there came a strange, gurgling series of notes, 

 liquid and sweet, that seemed to express utter rapture. Then the bird 

 dropped with a backward motion from the spray, and began to fall 

 slowly and somewhat spirally down through the bloom-covered boughs, 

 quite like a bird wounded to death by shot, clinging here and there to 

 a twig, quivering and weakly striking with its wings as it fell, but all the 

 time it was pouring forth the most exquisite gushes and trills of song, not 

 at all like its usual medley of improvised imitations, but strikingly, 

 almost startlingly individual and unique. The bird appeared to be 

 dying of an ecstacy of musical inspiration. The lower it fell the loud- 

 er and more rapturous became its voice, until the song ended on the 

 ground in a burst of incomparable vocal power. It remained for a 

 short time after its song was ended, crouched where it had fallen, with 

 its wings out- spread, and quivering and panting as if utterly exhaust- 

 ed; then it leaped boldly into the air and flew away into an adjacent 

 thicket." 



