BIRD NOTES. ; 69 
which he quotes from the tree-top singer, while further incontest- 
able evidence of the bird’s orthodoxy is given in another portion 
of this volume. 
What else our oruzthological bird is doing up there in the 
tree-top is shown in the following from Nuttall: “For all the 
while that this chorus enchants the hearer, the singer is casually 
hopping from spray to spray in quest of his active or crawling 
prey; and if a cessation occurs in his untiring lay, it is occa- 
sioned by the caterpillar or fly he has just captured ”— which re- 
calls a dozmot in relation to the bird which I once heard from 
Mr. Beecher, who remarked to me upon his piazza at “ Bosco- 
bel,” while his fancy hovered aloft in the maples, “That little fel- 
low has found a land of plenty up there, and he says grace like! 
a little Christian at every mouthful.” 
The world had long been wondering what tidings lay within 
the robin’s song that should carry the same joyous message to 
all, until an inspired poet told us. Were we, then, deaf never to 
have heard those words before: ‘“Cheerily, cheer up! cheer up! 
Cheerily, cheerily, cheer up!” It is not every one of our birds, 
however, that has found such an interpreter as he who has given 
us this most beautiful and perfect onomatopceia; but there are 
many songs which, whether as sympathetically rendered or not, 
have nevertheless been so aptly paraphrased as to afford their 
ready recognition. There is the brown thrasher, for instance, 
whose stray notes reach our ears from the grassy road yonder. In 
Concord, we learn, he was wont to superintend the spring planting 
—of beans, perhaps—with lively interest and counsel. ‘“ Drop it, 
drop it; cover it up, cover it up; pull it up, pull it up, pull it up!” 
in perfect Anglo-Saxon. Over the border in Connecticut, I can 
vouch for his somewhat similar strain, while farmers everywhere 
will recognize that faithful voice of the pasture, that curt and com- 
prehensive summons from the tangled lane, always associated with 
the brown furrows of the cornfield and the time of blooming dog- 
woods: 
“Shuck it, shuck it; sow it, sow it; 
Plough it, plough it; hoe it, hoe it!” 
