114 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOEEST. 



vicinity of them. It may, therefore, be inferred, that as 

 the country grows older, and is more extensively culti- 

 vated, the numbers of our warblers will increase ; and 

 it is not improbable that their vocal powers may be im- 

 proved. Hence it may be true, that for many years, 

 after the first settlement of this country, there were but 

 few singing birds of those species which at the present 

 time are so numerous, having multiplied with the in- 

 crease of human population and the culture of the wil- 

 derness. At that early period, though the same species 

 existed here, and were musical, their numbers might 

 have been so small that one could be seldom heard. 

 By this circumstance travellers were led to believe that 

 there were but few singing birds in America. 



A little observation would soon convince one that the 

 wilderness affords comparatively but few warblers. 

 There you find crows, woodpeckers, jays, and other 

 noisy birds, in great numbers ; and you occasionally 

 hear the notes of the solitary thrushes and flycatchers ; 

 but not until you are in the vicinity of orchards and 

 plantations, are your ears saluted with a full band of 

 feathered musicians. The common bobolinks are sel- 

 dom found in the deep forests, and are unfrequent in 

 the wild pastures and meadows. Their chief places of 

 resort are the cultivated grass lands. They build their 

 nests on the ground in the midst of the tall grass, and 

 these nests are exposed, in great numbers, by the scythe 

 of the haymaker. These birds, before America was 

 settled by the Europeans, and when the greater part of 

 the country was a wilderness of woods, ^must have been 

 comparatively few. There are probably thoxisands at 

 the present day to as many hundreds that existed in the 

 time of Columbus. The common robins, the song-spar- 

 rows, the grass-finches, and indeed all our familiar birds, 



