. MOCKINGBIRD. 
Mimus polyglottus Bots. 
PuatTe II, 
Winged mimic of the woods! thou motley fool! 
Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe? 
Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule 
Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. 
Wit—sophist —songster— Yorick of thy tribe, 
Thou sportive satirist of Nature’s school, 
To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, 
Arch scoffer, and mad Abbott of misrule! 
. For such thou art by day—but all night long 
Thou pour’st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain, 
As if thou didst in this, ‘thy moonlight song, 
Like to the melancholy Jacques, complain, 
Musing on falsehood, violence, and wrong, 
And sighing for thy motley coat again. 
WILDE. 
ST IS where the great magnolia shoots up its majestic trunk, crowned with evergreen 
leaves, and decorated with a thousand beautiful flowers, that perfume the air 
around; where the forests and fields are adorned with blossoms of every hue; where 
the golden orange ornaments the gardens and groves; where bignonias of various kinds 
interlace .their climbing stems around the white-flowered stuartia, and mounting still 
higher, cover the summits of the lofty trees around, accompanied with innumerable 
vines that here and there festoon the dense foliage of the magnificent woods, lending to 
the vernal breeze a slight portion of the perfume of their clustered flowers; where a 
genial warmth seldom forsakes the atmosphere; where berries and fruits of all descrip- 
tions are met with at every step;—in a word, kind reader, it is where Nature seems 
to have paused, as she passed over the earth, and opening her stores, to have strewed 
with unsparing hand the diversified seeds from which have sprung all the beautiful and 
splendid forms which I should in vain attempt to describe, that the Mockingbird has 
fixed its abode. There only its wondrous song can be heard. 
Thus Audubon describes the woodland scenery of his native State Louisiana, and 
correct as it is I think that the southern woods cannot compare with the romantic 
beauty and idyllic loveliness of our northern and eastern forests. But the gardens and 
ornamental plantations of the Gulf and South Atlantic States far surpass those of the 
North in beauty and magnificence. There luxuriates the deliciously-scented pure white 
gardenia, the glorious camellia, the umbrella-shaped pittosporum, the glowing hibiscus, 
the brilliant Indian azalea, the aromatic myrtle, the gorgeous amaryllis and crinum, 
the strongly fragrant banana-shrub and nightjasmine. Trees not known in northern 
gardens, such as umbrella china, grape-myrtle, magnolias, palms, and many different 
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