Argyll says that, though he was in the woods and fields of Canada and of the States in the richest moment of the spring, he heard little of that burst of song which in England comes from the blackcap, and the garden warbler, and the whitethroat, and the reed warbler, and the common wren, and (locally) from the nightingale. There is no lack of a burst of song in this country (except in the remote forest solitudes) during the richest moment of the spring, say from the 1st to the 20th of May, and at times till near midsummer; moreover, more bird-voices join in it, as I shall point out, than in Britain; but it is probably more fitful and intermittent, more confined to certain hours of the day, and probably proceeds from throats less loud and vivacious than that with which our distinguished critic was familiar. The ear hears best and easiest what it has heard before. Properly to apprehend and appreciate bird-songs, especially to disentangle them from the confused murmur of nature, requires more or less familiarity with them. If the duke had passed a season with us in some _one_ place in the country, in New York or New England, he would probably have modified his views about the silence of our birds. One season, early in May, I discovered an English skylark in full song above a broad, low meadow in the midst of a landscape that possessed features attractive to a great variety of our birds. Every morning for many days I used to go and sit on the brow of a low hill that commanded the field, or else upon a gentle swell in the midst of the meadow itself, and listen to catch the song of the lark. The maze and tangle of bird-voices and bird-choruses through which my ear groped its way searching for the new song can be imagined when I say that within hearing there were from fifteen to twenty different kinds of songsters, all more or less in full tune. If their notes and calls could have been materialized and made as palpable to the eye as they were to the ear, I think they would have veiled the landscape and darkened the day. There were big songs and little songs,--songs from the trees, the bushes, the ground, the air,--warbles, trills, chants, musical calls, and squeals, etc. Near by in the foreground were the catbird and the brown thrasher, the former in the bushes, the latter on the top of a hickory. These birds are related to the mockingbird, and may be called performers; their songs are a series of vocal feats, like the exhibition of an acrobat; they throw musical somersaults, and turn and twist and contort themselves in a very edifying manner, with now and then a ventriloquial touch. The catbird is the more shrill, supple, and feminine; the thrasher the louder, richer, and more audacious. The mate of the latter had a nest, which I found in a field under the spreading ground-juniper. From several points along the course of a bushy little creek there came a song, or a melody of notes and calls, that also put me out,--the