266 East and West 
appearance of the warblers—an event always 
attended with some mystic significance as if 
it were the expression of a feeling in Nature. 
When suddenly the brooding silence is broken 
by the trill of a pine warbler or by that quaint 
woodsy speech of the black-throated green, 
it is as if the oracle had spoken. The oracle 
has spoken to some of us. That long-drawn 
note of the meadowlark—if the fields could 
speak at that season, what else would they 
say? or how better could the swamp express 
itself than in the on-ke-lee of the redwing? 
Nor would it be autumn without that flit- 
ting of soberly dressed birds, those furtive 
snatches of song in which the ruby kinglet, 
the solitary vireo, the parula warbler in- 
dulge, which if they do not express any sad- 
ness in the bird, seem at least to voice, as 
if by intent, a vague sadness in us. The 
gathering of the blackbird clans, the warble 
of fugitive bluebirds, the rustling of leaves, 
all speak of one event; and the arrival of 
crossbills and siskins, of redpolls and snow- 
buntings is as much an expression of winter as 
were the former of autumn—a robust, wintry, 
self-contained mood with no lament, no sad- 
ness, no suggestion of parting. 
In the West this migration is vertical as 
