146 Idle Days tn Patagonia. 
among the bushes, pausing at intervals to listen to 
some new note; or to hide myself and sit or lie 
motionless in the middle of a thicket, until the 
birds forgot or ceased to be troubled at my pre- 
sence. The common resident mocking-bird was 
always present, each bird sitting motionless on the 
topmost spray of his favourite thorn, at intervals 
emitting a few notes, a phrase, then listening to 
the others. 
But there was one bitter drop in my sweet 
cup. It vexed my mind and made me almost 
unhappy to think that travellers and naturalists 
from Europe, whose works were known to me, 
were either silent or else said very little (and 
that mostly depreciatory) of the bird music that 
was so much to me. Darwin’s few words were 
especially remembered and rankled most in my 
mind, because he was the greatest and had 
given a good deal of attention to bird life in 
southern South America. The highest praise 
that he gave to a Patagonian songster was that it 
had ‘two or three pleasant notes ;’’ and of the 
Calandria mocking-bird, one of the finest melodists 
in La Plata, he wrote that it was nearly the only 
bird he had seen in South America that regularly 
took its stand for the purpose of singing ; that it 
was remarkable for possessing a song superior to 
that of any other kind, and that its song resembled 
that of the sedge warbler ! 
Speaking of British species, I do not think it 
could be rightly said that the song of the sedge 
