The Cardinal 41 



times into a soothing whisper or rise slowly and quicken into 

 a loud and cheering warble. A strain of almost sentimental 

 tenderness and sadness pervades by turns the song of the 

 Nightingale; it flows like a torrent, or dies away like an echo; 

 his varied ecstasies poured to the pale moonbeams, now meet 

 with no response but the sighing zephyr or the ever-murmur- 

 ing brook. 



The notes of our Cardinal are as full of hilarity as of 

 tender expression; his whistling call is uttered in the broad 

 glare of day, and is heard predominant over most of the 

 feathered choir by which he is surrounded. His responding 

 mate is the perpetual companion of all his joys and cares; 

 simple and content in his attachment, he is a stranger to 

 capricious romance of feeling, and the shades of melancholy, 

 however feeble and transient, find no harbor in his preoccu- 

 pied affections. 



On their arrival in the middle States in spring, violent 

 contests sometimes ensue between the unmated and jealous 

 males. When this dispute is for the present closed the pair, 

 probably for greater security and dreading a recurring quarrel 

 of doubtful issue, wander off to a remote distance from their 

 usual abode, and in this way, no doubt, occasionally visit coun- 

 tries but little frequented by the rest of their species. Early 

 in May, it seems, in Pennsylvania, according to Wilson, they 

 begin to prepare their nests, which are often placed in an 

 evergreen bush, cedar, laurel or holly. The external mate- 

 rials are small twigs, dry weeds and slips of vine bark, the 

 lining being formed of fine stalks of dry grass. The eggs, 

 four or five, are of a dull white, thickly spotted all over 

 with brownish-olive. They usually raise two broods in the 

 season. 



