THE INVITATION 215 
bird, if the books are to be credited, is melody and 
harmony. Again, he says the song of the blue 
grosbeak resembles the bobolink’s, which it does 
about as much as the color of the two birds resem- 
bles each other; one is black and white and the 
other is blue. The song of the wood-wagtail, he 
says, consists of a ‘‘short succession of simple notes 
beginning with emphasis and gradually falling.” 
The truth is they run up the scale instead of down, 
beginning low and ending in a shriek. 
Yet, considering the extent of Audubon’s work, 
the wonder is the errors are so few. I can at this 
moment recall but one observation of his, the con- 
trary of which I have proved to be true. In his 
account of the bobolink he makes a point of the fact 
that, in returning south in the fall, they do not 
travel by night as they do when moving north in 
the spring. In Washington I have heard their calls 
as they flew over at night for four successive au- 
tumns. As he devoted the whole of a long life to 
the subject, and figured and described over four 
hundred species, one feels a real triumph on finding 
in our common woods a bird not described in his 
work. I have seen but two. Walking in the 
woods one day in early fall, in the vicinity of West 
Point, I started up a thrush that was sitting on the 
ground. It alighted on a branch a few yards off, 
and looked new to me. I thought I had never 
before seen so long-legged a thrush. I shot it, and 
saw that it was a new acquaintance. Its peculiarities 
were its broad, square tail; the length of its legs, 
