208 THE LANGUAGE OF BIRDS. 
close at your ear, is scarce any louder than when a 
great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted 
with insects, and known that the grasshopper kind 
is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed 
but that it had been a locusta whispering in the 
bushes. The country people laugh when you tell 
them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful 
creature, skulking in the thickest part of a bush, 
and will sing at a yard distance, provided it be con- 
cealed. I was obliged to get a person to go on the 
other side of the hedge, where it haunted ; and then 
it would run, creeping like a mouse, before us, for a 
hundred yards together, through the bottom of the 
thorns ; yet it would not come into fair sight ; but 
in the morning early, and when undisturbed, it sings 
on the top of a twig, gaping, and shivering with its 
wings." 
The note of this bird has often deceived me. I 
have frequently walked, early in the spring, over 
Coombwood and Wimbledon Common, for the pur- 
pose of collecting heaths and primroses, which grow 
about those places in great luxuriance, when sud- 
denly my attention has been attracted by this grass- 
hopper-like music. Being much surprised at hearing 
it so early in the season, I have endeavoured to get 
