37 
on the migration of birds. 
rating beams of the sun, were they not at intervals intercepted 
by clouds, would rob the heart of the gaiety they for a while 
inspire, and sink it into languor. There is a perfect con- 
sistency in the order in which nature seems to have directed 
the singing birds to fill up the day with their pleasing har- 
mony. To an observer of those divine laws which harmonize 
the general order of things, there appears a design in the 
arrangement of this sylvan minstrelsy. It is not in the 
haunted meadow, nor frequented field, we are to expect the 
gratification of indulging ourselves in this pleasing specula- 
tion to its full extent ; we must seek for it in the park, the 
forest, or some sequestered dell, half enclosed by the coppice 
or the wood. 
First the robin, and not the lark, as has been generally 
imagined, as soon as twilight has drawn the imperceptible 
line between night and day, begins his lonely song. How 
sweetly does this harmonize with the soft dawning of day ! 
He goes on till the twinkling sun-beams begin to tell him his 
notes no longer accord with the rising scene. Up starts the 
lark, and with him a variety of sprightly songsters, whose 
lively notes are in perfect correspondence with the gaiety of 
the morning. The general warbling continues, with now 
and then an interruption, for reasons before assigned, by the 
transient croak of the raven, the screaming of the jay and the 
swift, or the pert chattering of the daw. The nightingale, 
unwearied by the vocal exertions of the night, withdraws not 
proudly by day from his inferiors in song, but joins them 
in the general harmony. The thrush is wisely placed on the 
summit of some lofty tree, that its loud and piercing notes 
may be softened by distance before they reach the ear, while 
