BIRD-SONGS 
an oriole, and a wood thrush, each of which had a 
song of its own that far exceeded any other. I stood 
one day by a trout-stream, and suspended my fish- 
ing for several minutes to watch a song sparrow 
that was singing on a dry limb before me. He had 
five distinct songs, each as markedly different from 
the others as any human songs, which he repeated 
one after the other. He may have had a sixth or 
a seventh, but he bethought himself of some busi- 
ness in the next field, and flew away before he had 
exhausted his repertory. I once had a letter from 
Robert Louis Stevenson, who said he had read an 
account I had written of the song of the English 
blackbird. He said I might as well talk of the song 
of man; that every blackbird had its own song; and 
then he told me of a remarkable singer he used to 
hear somewhere amid the Scottish hills. But his 
singer was, of course, an exception ; twenty-four 
blackbirds out of every twenty-five probably sing 
the same song, with no appreciable variations: but 
the twenty-fifth may show extraordinary powers. I 
told Stevenson that his famous singer had probably 
been to school to some nightingale on the Continent 
orin southern England. I might have told him of the 
robin I once heard here that sang with great spirit 
and accuracy the song of the brown thrasher, or of 
another that had the note of the whip-poor-will 
interpolated in the regular robin song, or of still 
another that had the call of the quail. In each case 
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