Sbriftes=Botes 



mocking-bird more patiently and exhaus- 

 tively, perhaps, than any bird was ever 

 before studied, I can now, at the end of 

 twenty years, freely say that Buffon's 

 description is the very truest character- 

 sketch that our king of song has ever 

 been the subject of. It was a long way 

 from Buffon's study in his garden at 

 Monbart to a Carolina thorn-bush or haw- 

 tree in which the moqueur was singing: 

 but the great naturalist's genius had com- 

 mand of the range ; his imagination grasped 

 almost every detail of the performance, 

 even to a strong hint of the rare drop- 

 ping-song, which has been missed by all 

 of our native ornithologists. 



Buffon's chapter on the kingfisher is 

 another inimitable piece of writing. We 

 find strong traces of it iii all the halcyon 

 literature from that day to this ; but if any 

 student of birds would Hke a sudden vision 

 of the difference between Buffon's notion 

 of ornithology and the present exhaustive 

 practice of specialism, let him compare the 

 essay just mentioned with R. B. Sharpe's 

 monograph on the family of kingfishers, 

 125 



