148 WOOD NOTES WILD. 
WaitE-sELuiep Nutsatcu. — Contin. 
legs not larger than a darning-needle and quite as naked, 
and toes the size of a hair, with an activity and rapidity 
reminding us of electricity itself? And this is only his 
regular exercise while getting his breakfast.” 
Field-Sparrow. (See p. 35.) 
“TI find more and more that the birds extemporize,! and 
that those of the same species do not sing alike. All 
summer in Lynn the field-sparrows ‘went up’ accelerando 
é crescendo. Were, twenty times a day, I hear them 
going down, down every time, and diminishing, — just re- 
versing it. It is a ‘queer’ thing, but there is no mistake 
about it. Again, the indigo-bird sings nothing here that 
I heard from him in Lynn. 
“But nobody can tell me what ‘feller’ sings, — 
He is the ‘lost chord.’ I knew the song well when a 
boy.; heard it once at Maple Grove, but could not see the 
bird.” — C., S. P. in a letter dated August, 1888. 
“T must not omit to say that occasionally one may hear 
the field-sparrow reverse the order of the melody here 
given by descending after the opening monotones.” — Note 
written by the author on his field-sparrow paper after its appearance in 
the Century Magazine. 
1 See Index, Extemporizing. 
