BIRDS OF THE PASTURE AND FOREST. 119 



Nature has made all her scenes and the sights and 

 sounds that accompany them more lovely by causing 

 them to be respectively suggestive of a peculiar class of 

 sensations. The birds of the pasture and forest are not 

 frequent enough in cultivated places to be associated with 

 our homes and our gardens. Nature has confined certain 

 species of birds and animals to particular localities, and 

 thereby gives a poetic or picturesque attraction to their 

 features. There are certain flowers that cannot be culti- 

 vated in a garden, as if they were designed for the exclu- 

 sive adornment of those secluded arbors which the spade 

 and the plough have never profaned. Here flowers grow 

 which are too holy for culture, and birds sing whose 

 voices 'were never heard in the cage of the voluptuary, 

 and whose tones inspire us with a sense of freedom known 

 only to those who often retire from the world to live in 

 religious communion with nature. 



THE SWAMP- SPARROW. 



There is a little Sparrow whose notes I often hear 

 about the shores of unfrequented ponds, and from their 

 untrodden islets covered with button-bush and sweet gale, 

 and never in any other situations. The sound of his 

 voice always enhances the sensation of rude solitude with 

 which I look upon this primitive scenery. We often see 

 him perched upon the branch of a dead tree that stands 

 in the water, a few rods from the shore, apparently watch- 

 ing our angling operations from his leafless perch, where 

 he sings so sweetly that the very desolation of the scene 

 borrows a charm from his voice that renders every object 

 delightful. 



This little solitary warbler is the Swamp-Sparrow. 

 He bears some resemblance to the Song-Sparrow, but he is 

 without that bird's charming variety of modulation. His 



