254 TEXAS AND ARIZONA 



In the way of music, neither bird is equal to 

 the brown thrasher of the East. In fact, if I am 

 to be judge, one Massachusetts thrasher, in his 

 cinnamon-colored suit (and in the top of a gray 

 birch), could outsing any half-dozen of the birds 

 in this Arizona desert. It is to be said, however, 

 that there is a third species here (not on the face 

 of the desert itself, but in the thickets along the 

 EiUito River), the crissal thrasher so called, 

 whose song I have yet to make sure of. He is 

 larger even than the Palmer, and to look at him 

 should have a fuller voice. 



And this reminds me that I had been in Tuc- 

 son more than a month before I saw a mocking- 

 bird ; and even now, when I have been here 

 almost two months, I have seen but three. The 

 people generally seem to mistake the thrashers 

 for mockers. If I speak to them about the 

 strangeness of the mocker's absence, they declare 

 that mockers are common here. At least two 

 persons have turned upon me with the assertion, 

 "Why, there's one singing out there at this 

 minute." And they point to a thrasher, a bird 

 that wears not one of the mocker's three colors, 

 — gray, black, and white, — and for music is as 

 much like him as a child's tin whistle is like a 

 master's flute. And still it is true, at least the 

 systematists tell us so, and I have no thought of 



