BOYHOOD AND BIEDS. 
65 
the fence alongside the public road, or in fifty other places 
just as public. But this is the mocking bird under different 
circumstances, if not a very different species of which I now 
speak. It is of the hardy pioneer in a new country, subject 
to the dangers and annoyances, which I have been describ- 
ing, and compelled to seek safety in the exercise of the ex- 
tremest caution and subtlest sagacity of which it may be pos- 
sessed, of which we are giving you the characteristics, not 
the smaller and feebler native of the emasculating orange- 
groves, where it has, from time immemorial, been protected 
and indeed domesticated, as our sparrows are. We tell you 
of a bird of lighter plumage, of nearly one-third larger size and 
weight, possessing a power of utterance superior in volume to 
the feeble Southerner, as are the notes of the clarion to the fife ! 
We are describing a conqueror, as well as a discov- 
erer ; haughty, strong, audacious, cunning, adventurous 
and sagacious, whose stormy and impetuous voice bids 
all living things be mute and listen to his song of Earthy 
triumphing over silence ; whose hardy frame trembles not 
when the North- wind cometh, but who listeneth on his toss- 
ing perch, that he may mock its piping when the Summer 
comes, and scare the Tropic-flame bird with the icy notes of 
Winter ; not of a monotonous, timid singer that fatigues the 
ear with running over a short gamut of imitations, the 
sounds of which can be distinguished a hundred yards or so, 
but of a singer, whose notes are infinitely various, and may be 
heard with thrillling distinctesss over a mile. It is, in a 
word, of the Mocking Bird of Kentucky and the Middle States 
that we speak, and not of the Sou.thern Mocking Bird, which 
is, I believe I can prove conclusively, a different species. 
I know I am running a great risk in this assertion, but I 
am confident of being able to maintain, that the bird of Ken- 
tucky and the Middle States is as different from the Mock- 
ing Bird of Louisiana as the stern, hardy, and giant-limbed 
Pioneer, who conquered the red-man of the dark and 
bloody ground, was a different man from the small and 
5 
