‘The plumage of the mocking bird has nothing gaudy or brilliant in it, but that which so strongly recommends him, is his full, strong and musical voice, capable of almost every modulation, from the mellow tones of the woodthrush, to the savage screams of the bald eagle. In his native groves, mounted on the top of a tall bush, in the dawn of a dewy morning, while the woods are already vocal with a multitude of warblers, his admirable song rises pre-eminent over every competitor. The ear can listen to his music alone. Nor is the strain altogether imitative. His own native notes are bold and full, and varied seemingly beyond all limits. They consist of short expressions of two, three, or five and six syllables, generally interspersed with imitations, all of them uttered with great emphasis and rapidity, and continued for an hour at a time with undiminished ardor; his expanded wings and tail glistening with white, and the buoyant gaiety of his action arresting the eye, as his song most irresistibly does the ear. He sweeps round with enthusiastic ecstasy――he mounts and descends as his song swells or dies away――and, as Mr. Bartram has beautifully expressed it, “he bounds aloft with the celerity of an arrow, as if to recover or recall his very soul, expired in the last elevated strain.” While thus exerting himself, a bystander would suppose that the whole feathered tribes had assembled together on a trial for skill――so perfect are his imitations. ‘The mocking bird loses little of the power and energy of his song by confinement. In his domesticated state, when he commences his career of song, it is impossible to stand by uninterested. He whistles for the dog; Cæsar starts up, wags his tail, and runs to meet his master. He squeaks out like a hurt chicken, and the hen hurries about with hanging wings and bristling feathers, clucking to protect her injured brood. The barking of the dog, the mewing of the cat, the creaking of the passing wheelbarrow, follow with great truth and rapidity. He repeats the tune taught him by his master, though of considerable length, fully and faithfully. He runs over the quiverings of the canary, and the clear whistlings of the Virginia nightingale, or red bird, with such superior execution and effect, that the mortified songsters feel their own inferiority, and become silent, while he seems to triumph in their defeat by redoubling his exertions.’