GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS 429 



or listen and report on the sweetness of their song. The 

 legislature will preserve a bird professedly not because 

 it is a beautiful creature, but because it is a good scav- 

 enger or the like. This, at least, is the defense set up. 

 It is as if the question were whether some celebrated 

 singer of the human race — some Jenny Lind or an- 

 other — did more harm or good, should be destroyed, 

 or not, and therefore a committee should be appointed, 

 not to listen to her singing at all, but to examine the 

 contents of her stomach and see if she devoured any- 

 thing which was injurious to the farmers and gardeners, 

 or which they cannot spare. 



Sept. 1, 1859. If you would study the birds now, go 

 where their food is, i. e. the berries, especially to the 

 wild black cherries, elder-berries, poke berries, moun- 

 tain-ash berries, and ere long the barberries, and for 

 pigeons the acorns. In the sprout-land behind Britton's 

 Camp, I came to a small black cherry full of fruit, and 

 then, for the first time for a long while, I see and hear 

 cherry-birds — their shrill and fine seringo 1 — and the 

 note of robins, which of late are scarce. We sit near 

 the tree and listen to the now unusual sounds of these 

 birds, and from time to time one or two come dashing 

 from out the sky toward this tree, till, seeing us, they 

 whirl, disappointed, and perhaps alight on some neigh- 

 boring twigs and wait till we are gone. The cherry- 

 birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild 

 cherry in the town. You are as sure to find them on them 

 now, as bees and butterflies on the thistles. If we stay 



1 [Thoreau's word for a note of the quality of the cedar waxwing's. 

 See pp. 290 note, 291.] 



