98 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



mand to castigate unfortunate "William. I do not won- 

 der that the redbird learned to repeat the notes of his 

 down-stairs neighbor when they rung in his ears night- 

 ly for several weeks. 



I have intimated that the other cardinals about here 

 were not given to mocking their neighbors. Do I know 

 this ? May not many a short song of some unseen bird 

 have been the utterance of a cardinal ? The acutest ear 

 could not have detected the difference had the bird 

 ceased singing with the syllable " will ;" but this it did 

 not do, and I made the discovery partly from this fact, 

 and that the whippoorwill does not sing hours after 

 sunrise. 



It is never wise to be positive in the matter of birds. 

 I have insisted that the cardinal-redbird is not a mock- 

 er. I take it all back. 



Perhaps the creek was never at a lower stage than 

 now. Above tide-water the river is but a valley of wet 

 rocks, and here, where the tide creeps meadowward twice 

 daily, is the stream, as usual, but so shrunken that many 

 a low-lying meadow-tract offers a firm footing to the 

 rambler. In numerous little sink-holes, from which the 

 water has evaporated or soaked away, I find the skele- 

 tons of small fishes, neatly wrapped in the scale-armor 

 of their shrunken skins. They are curious objects, and 

 no length of soaking restores their former graceful out- 

 lines. As I pick them from the mud, the imprint of 

 their shrivelled forms is left — fossil impressions for the 

 naturalists of ten thousand years to come. This is possi- 

 ble, of course, so I wrote on the smooth surface from 



