g6 The America7i Naturalist. [March, 
having every sense of musical concord outraged by the vast 
callithumpian chorus, there should come, as there surely will, 
an echo of tenfold emphasis from overhead, eliciting now here, 
now there, the wierd password till all is hushed along the shore, 
— then, methinks, in sounds not sweet he could detect a 
direful harmony. 
But the Qua bird's is as one among the many voices of the 
night which nearly concerns us. Of perhaps four species of 
frog which in the spring make such localities nightly jubilant, 
two, more especially, are as well " taken off," vocally speaking, 
by the Bittern and Green heron as they are in the more literal 
sense of the phrase. To the third it seems fair to assign the 
origin of all quacking and its corresponding modifications 
among the Anatidae, while the fourth makes a sound so like 
the notes of a Sora Rail as to put one in doubt which is the best 
mimic. Turning over the pages of Nuttall's " Ornithology" at 
this moment, the following, relating to the morning cries of the 
yellow-breasted Rail seems opportune, " As soon as awake, 
they call out in an abrupt and cackling cry, * kreck, *krek, ' krek, 
• krek, ' kuk 'k'kh, which note, apparently from the young was 
answered by the parent in a lower, soothing tone. The whole 
of these uncouth and gutteral notes have no bad resemblance 
to the croaking of the tree-frog, as to sound." 
To the student of shadows of things gone by, nocturnal 
sounds and scenes are a fitting environment How to-day's 
dark guess gathers increasing light by this backward look into 
the infinite night of myriad yesterdays, where lie, in silent 
readiness, the unspoken but not unspeakable secrets of the 
In considering the second class of bird-mimics, — viz., those 
which imitate sounds in inanimate nature, we approach nearer 
the question of the origin as distinguished from that of the de- 
velopment of their language. Aristotle goes to the root of the 
matter when he queries regarding the European Bittern's note, 
— "why do those which are called Bomugi, and which are 
fabulously reported to be bulls consecrated to some deity, 
usually dwell among marshes which are situate near rivers ? Is 
