16 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 



ing-bird ; but when both are free, the latter is 

 infinitely superior at every point. There is a 

 wide variety of pure flute-notes expressed by 

 the wild mocking-bird. These notes become 

 vitiated in captivity and their tone degraded 

 to the level of mere mellow piping. In the 

 hedges of Cherokee rose that grew along the 

 old Augustine road east of Tallahassee, mock- 

 ing-birds were so numerous that their songs, 

 mingling together, made a strange din which 

 could be heard a long way on a still morning. 



I have already spoken of the injustice done 

 the mocking-bird by the name given it, but at 

 this point I may say that other American song 

 birds of a superior order have suffered even 

 more from this cause. Cat-bird and thrasher, 

 ■ — what names to be embalmed in poetry and 

 romance ! It required all the genius of Emer- 

 son successfully to use a titmouse as the sub- 

 ject for a poem. If Bryant's Lines to a Water- 

 fowl had been addressed to a duck or a snake- 

 bird, one would scarcely be content to accept 

 the poem as perfect. A name certainly has 

 an intrinsic value. 



Mr. Cable in his powerful novel, Dr. Sevier, 

 speaks of the mocking-bird's morning note as 

 unmusical. At certain seasons of the year the 

 bird's voice is not especially pleasing, but this 

 is not in song-time. Early morning and the 

 twilight of evening in the spring call forth its 

 most charming powers. Its night song is 

 sweet and peculiarly effective, but except on 

 rare occasions in the nesting season, when the 

 moon is very brilliant the nocturnal notes are 

 pitched in a minor key and the voice is less 

 flexible and brilliant, as if the bird were sing- 

 ing in its sleep. 



