ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS. 67 



chords. They made many sorry and amusing at- 

 tempts to chant and trill, but their voices would 

 break and catch in the most remarkable ways, now 

 sliding up too high in the scale, now sliding down 

 too low, and now veering too much to one side, so 

 to speak. One tyro, I observed, sang the first part 

 of a run very well, almost as well, in fact, as an adult 

 musician could have sung it ; but when he tried to 

 finish, his voice seemed to fly all to fliinders. He 

 made the attempt again and again, but to no pur- 

 pose. It was a day for which I have cut a notch 

 in the tally-stick of memory. Leaving the company 

 of young vocalists at their rehearsals at the border 

 of the woods, I made my way to a swamp not far 

 off, where a pleasant surprise lay in ambush. Here 

 were no longer found young song-sparrows, but 

 adults, and you should have heard them sing. What 

 a contrast between the crude songs of the young 

 birds and the loud, clear, splendidly intoned and 

 executed trills of these trained musicians ! 



But I must return to the subject of migration. 

 The fifteenth of March was a raw, blustering day, 

 as its predecessors had been ; but in the woods sev- 

 eral fox-sparrows were singing, not their best, of 

 course, but fairly well for such weather. They must 

 have come during the night. But why had they 

 come when the weather was so cold? Most birds 

 wait until there is a bland air-current from the south 

 on which they can ride triumphantly. Had this 

 small band of fox-sparrows followed the example 

 of a well-known American humorist, and gone to 



