290 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



spade to-day, the sun having just come out, he is not 

 left wholly to the .mercy of his thoughts, nature is not 

 a mere void to him, but he can hardly fail to hear the 

 pleasing and encouraging notes of some newly arrived 

 bird. The strain of the grass finch is very likely to fall 

 on his ear and convince him, whether he is conscious 

 of it or not, that the world is beautiful and life a fair 

 enterprise to engage in. It will make him calm and 

 contented. If you yield for a moment to the impres- 

 sions of sense, you hear some bird giving expression 

 to its happiness in a pleasant strain. We are provided' 

 with singing birds and with ears to hear them. What 

 an institution that ! Nor are we obliged to catch and 

 cage them, nor to be bird-fanciers in the common sense. 

 Whether a man's work be hard or easy, whether he be 

 happy or unhappy, a bird is appointed to sing to a man 

 while he is at his work. 



SAVANNAH SPAEKOW ; SERINGO-BIKD 



May 1, 1852. I hear the note of the shy Savannah 

 sparrow (F. Savanna), 1 that plump bird with a dark- 



1 Probably have seen it before, — seringo. [Though here, where the 

 " seringo-bird " makes its first appearance in the Journal, its identity 

 with the Savannah sparrow seems to have been unquestioned by Tho- 

 reau, it proved afterwards to be almost as puzzling to him as the ever 

 elusive " night-warbler." The probability is that the " seringo " in 

 this and most other cases was the Savannah sparrow, but it may some- 

 times have been the yellow-winged, or grasshopper, sparrow, or even, 

 as Thoreau once suspected, the grass finch, or vesper sparrow. It is 

 quite likely that at times the bird he saw was not the bird he heard. 

 Passerculus sandwichensis savanna is the scientific name now in use. 

 Only a few of the many references to the bird in the Journal are here 

 given.] 



