As an illustration of the truth of this remark, I would say that simple melodies have among all people exercised a greater power over the imagination, though producing less pleasure to the ear, than louder and more complicated music. Nature employs a very small amount of physical agency to create sentiment, and when an excess is used a diminished effect is produced. I am persuaded that the effect of our sacred music is injured by an excess of harmony or too great a volume of sound. A loud crash of thunder deafens and terrifies, but its low and distant rumbling produces a pleasant emotion of sublimity.

The songs of birds are as intimately allied with poetry as with music. "Feathered Lyric" is a name that has been applied to the Lark by one of the English poets; and the analogy is apparent when we consider how much the song of this bird resembles a lyrical ballad in its influence on the mind. Though the song of a bird is without words, how plainly does it suggest a long train of agreeable images of love, beauty, friendship, and home! When a young person is affected with grief, he seldom fails, if endowed with a sensitive mind, to listen to the birds as sympathizers in his affliction. Through them the deities of the grove seem to offer him their consolation. By his companionship with the objects of nature all pleasing sights and sounds have become anodynes for his sorrow; and those who have this mental alembic for turning grief into poetic melancholy cannot be reduced to despondency. This poetic sentiment exalts our pleasures and soothes our afflictions by some illusive charm, derived from religion or romance. Without this reflection of light from poetry, what is the passion of love, and what our love of beauty, but a mere gravitation ?

BIRDS OF THE GARDEN AND ORCHARD.

I.

THE singing-birds whose notes are familiar to us in towns and villages and in the suburbs of cities are strangers to the deep woods and solitary pastures. Our familiar birds follow in the wake of the pioneer of the wilderness, and increase in numbers with the clearing and settlement of the country, not from any feeling of dependence on the protection of man, but from the greater supply of insect food caused by the tilling of the ground. It is well known that the labors of the farmer cause an excessive multiplication of all those insects whose larvæ are cherished in the soil, and of all that infest the garden and orchard. The farm is capable of supporting insects in the ratio of its capacity for producing fruit. These will multiply with their means of subsistence contained in and upon the earth; and birds, if not destroyed by man, will increase with the insects that constitute their food.

Hence we may explain the fact, which often excites surprise, that more singing-birds are seen in the suburbs of a great city than in the deep forest, where, even in the vocal season, the silence is sometimes melancholy. The species which are thus familiar in their habits, though but a small part of the whole number, include nearly all the singing-birds that are known to the generality of our people. These are the birds of the garden and orchard. There are many other species, wild and solitary in their habits, which are delightful songsters in the uncultivated regions lying outside of the farm. Even these are rare in the depths of the forest. They live on the edge of the

wood and the half-wooded pasture. The birds of the garden and orchard have been frequently described, and are very generally known, though but little has been said of their powers and peculiarities of song. In the sketches that follow I have given particular attention to the vocal powers of the different birds, and have attempted to designate the part that each one performs in the grand hymn of Nature.

THE SONG-SPARROW.

The Song-Sparrow, one of our most familiar birds, claims our first attention as the earliest visitant and latest resident of all the tuneful band, and one that is universally known and admired. He is plain in his vesture, undistinguished from the female by any superiority of plumage. He comes forth in the spring and takes his departure in the autumn in the same suit of russet and gray by which he is always identified. In March, before the violet has ventured to peep out from the southern slope of the pasture or the sunny brow of the hill, while the northern skies are liable at any hour to pour down a storm of sleet and snow, the Song-Sparrow, beguiled by southern winds, has already appeared, and on still mornings may be heard warbling his few merry notes, as if to make the earliest announcement of his arrival. He is therefore the true harbinger of spring; and, if not the sweetest songster, he has the merit of bearing to man the earliest tidings of the opening year, and of proclaiming the first vernal promises of the season. As the notes of those birds that sing only in the night come with a double charm to our ears, because they are harmonized by silence and hallowed by the hour that is sacred to repose, in like manner does the Song-Sparrow delight us in tenfold measure, because he sings the sweet prelude to the universal hymn.

His haunts are fields half cultivated and bordered with wild shrubbery. He is somewhat more timid than the Hair-Bird, that comes close up to our doorsteps to find the crumbs that are swept from our tables. Though his voice is constantly heard in the garden and orchard, he selects a retired spot for his nest, preferring not to trust his progeny to the doubtful mercy of the lords of creation. In some secure retreat, under a tussock of moss or a tuft of low shrubbery, the female sits upon her nest of soft dry grass, containing four or five eggs of a greenish-white surface covered with brownish specks. Beginning in April, she rears two and often three broods during the season, and her mate prolongs his notes until the last brood has flown from the nest.

The notes of the Song-Sparrow would not entitle him to rank with our principal singing-birds, were it not for the remarkable variations in his song, in which I think he is equalled by no other bird. Of these variations there are six or seven that may be distinctly recognized, differing enough to be considered separate tunes, but they are all based upon the same theme. The bird does not warble these in regular succession. It is in the habit of repeating one of them several times, then leaves it and repeats another in a similar manner. Mr. Charles S. Paine, of East Randolph, Massachusetts, was, I believe, the first to observe this habit of the Song-Sparrow. He took note, on one occasion, of the number of times a particular bird sang each of the tunes. As he had numbered them, the bird sang No. 1, 21 times; No. 2, 36 times; No. 3, 23 times; No. 4, 19 times; No. 5, 21 times; No. 6, 32 times; No. 7, 18 times. He made the same experiment with a dozen different individuals; and was confident from these trials that each male has his seven songs, or variations of the theme, and they are all equally irregular in the order of singing them.