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." 



