OUR FOREST CHORISTERS. 177 



distinguished but with difficulty, on account of the rapid- 

 ity of their utterance. I have often attempted to transcribe 

 some of their notes upon the musical scale, but I am per- 

 suaded that such sketches can be only approximations to 

 literal correctness. As different individuals of the same 

 species sing very differently, the notes as transcribed from 

 the song of one individual will never exactly represent the 

 song of another. If we listen attentively, however, to a 

 number of songs, we will detect in all of them a theme, as it 

 is termed by musicians, of which the different individuals 

 of the species warble their respective variations. Every 

 song is, technically speaking, a fantasia constructed upon 

 this theme, from which none of the species ever departs. 



/. Elliot Cabot. 



LIFE AND SONG IN THE WOODS. 



1. "Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I 

 counted over forty varieties of birds, though this is an un- 

 usual number for a single forest. I descended a hill and 

 approached the hemlocks through a large sugar - bush. 

 When twenty rods distant, I hear all along the line of the 

 forest the incessant warble of the red -eyed fly-catcher, cheer- 

 ful and happy as the merry whistle of a school-boy. He is 

 one of our most common and widely distributed birds. 

 Approach any forest, at any hour of the day, in any kind 

 of weather, from May to August, in any of the middle or 

 eastern districts, and the chances are that the first note 

 you hear will be his. Rain or shine, before noon or after, 

 in the deep forest or in the village grove — when it is too 

 hot for the thrushes or too cold and windy for the war- 

 blers — it is never out of time or place for this little min- 

 strel to indulge his cheerful strain. 



