SONGS OF AMERICAN BIRDS. 
of which had a song of its own that far ex- 
ceeded any other. I stood one day by a trout- 
stream, and suspended my fishing for several 
minutes to watch a song-sparrow that was 
singing on a dry limb before me. He had five 
distinct songs, each as markedly different 
from the others as any human songs, which 
he repeated one after the other. Hemay have 
had a sixth or a seventh, but he bethought 
himself of some business in the next field, 
and flew away before he had exhausted his 
repertory. [I once had a letter from Robert 
Louis Stevenson, who said he had read some 
account I had written of the song of the 
English blackbird. He said I might as well 
talk of the song of man; that every black- 
bird had its own song; and then he told me 
of a remarkable singer he used to hear some- 
where amid the Scottish hills. But his singer 
was, of course, an exception; twenty-four 
blackbirds out of every twenty-five probably 
sing the same song, with no appreciable 
variations: but the twenty-fifth may show 
extraordinary powers. I told Stevenson 
that his famous singer had probably been 
(27 
to school to some nightingale on the Con- 
tinent or in southern England. I might have 
told him of the robin I once heard here 
that sang with great spirit and accuracy the 
song of the brown thrasher. It had probably 
heard it and learned it while very young. In 
the Trossachs, in Scotland, I followed a song- 
thrush about for a long time, attracted by 
its peculiar song. It repeated over and over 
again three or four notes of a well-known air, 
which it might have caught from some shep- 
herd-boy whistling to his flock or to his cow. 
The songless birds—why has nature denied 
them this gift? But they nearly all have 
some musical call or impulse that serves 
them very well. The quail has his whistle, 
the woodpecker his drum, the pewee his 
plaintive cry, the chickadee his exquisitely 
sweet call, the highhole his long, repeated 
« wick, wick, wick,» which is one of the most 
welcome sounds of spring, the jay his musi- 
cal gurgle, the hawk his scream, the crow 
his sturdy caw. Only one of our pretty birds 
of the orchard is reduced to an all but in- 
audible note, and that is the cedar-bird. 
BLUEBIRD. 
