SPRING ARRIVAL OF THE BIRDS. 43 
over one another in such a manner as to make the song 
far-reaching and very effective. No other sound so 
hallows the woods, and places where I find these artists 
congregated, if within reach, I visit again and again. 
It seems curious that a bird voice will sometimes fill 
so large a place in the memory, to the exclusion of 
other things that would appear to be much more prom- 
inent. In a carriage journey of several hundred miles, 
no other places or events were so stamped on my mind 
as two pieces of woodland, in which the veeries were 
abundant and unusually tuneful. On the return. we 
went many miles out of our way to stay one night in 
the vicinity to hear their morning and evening songs. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, in speaking of the objects of 
interest enjoyed at Windsor Castle, says that none 
others so stirred his heart with pleasurable emotions as 
the hawthorn trees in blossom, and the notes of an 
English cuckoo in the Park. “Of all I saw and heard 
there, the two notes of the cuckoo will survive all other 
memories.” 
The bobolinks (Dolichonyx oryzworus) make their 
appearance in this latitude early in May, some of them 
even in April, but these earlier comers show by their 
disconsolate manner that their surroundings are not yet 
congenial, They are summer birds and need their nat- 
ural accessories, meadows of waving timothy, and green 
pastures flecked with the gold of buttercups. A coun- 
try meadow without this cheerful, conspicuous singer 
in buff and black, would be like the big, brown country 
barn without its twittering swallow about its eaves and 
