Mbere tbe /lDocfting=bfrb Stngs 



oases which lie scattered through the 

 Southern forests Hke islands of bloom in 

 a desert of dusky swamps and funereal 

 moss. Each note is a wonder, each strain 

 a mystery. Here is a bird considerably 

 smaller than a blue jay, delicate, fragile, 

 whose weight will scarcely bend the slen- 

 derest twig; but out of its tiny throat 

 leaps a rapturous medley of flute-notes, 

 pure and liquid as spring-water, easily 

 heard a quarter of a mile away ! Easily, 

 I say; but in special cases it has been 

 heard much farther. Buffon heard it 

 across nearly four thousand miles of land 

 and sea, and described it with enthusiastic 

 coloring, in the same way that so many 

 of our non-migrant American poets have 

 heard the nightingale distinctly enough 

 to weave his strains into their verse. 



In one of my pedestrian tours along the 

 bank of the Jordan, — not the one on whose 

 " stormy banks " the hymn-writer stood 

 to "cast a wishful eye," but the Jordan 

 through which, at its head waters, John A. 

 Murrell rode often in his pursuit of dark 

 deeds, — I lately came upon a spot where 



