THE HERMIT THRUSH 57 



After much study I decided that there 

 was no law discoverable ; the order of the 

 phrases always seemed to depend upon 

 the whim of the bird. But this does not, 

 even in the smallest way, indicate any 

 action beyond the automatic. The whims 

 of animal life are all associational. 



The last time I heard Dulcet (or any 

 hermit thrush) was on the tenth day of 

 August. For weeks the bird world had 

 been gradually becoming quiet. First, 

 the bobolinks suddenly stopped the tink- 

 ling outpouring of their haphazard 

 ecstasy; then, on the tenth day of July, 

 well on toward eight o'clock at night, the 

 last song of the veery came weirdly swell- 

 ing out of the nearest woods. This final 

 veery song seemed to be a selah-signal 

 to the whole chorus, and one by one the 

 singers obeyed. How well I remember 



