The song of birds must be the expression of some sentiment; they surely sing as much for their own pleasure as to charm those who listen to them. While they fill the woods with their melodious accents they direct their looks on all sides, as if proud of their talents, and desirous of gathering the tribute of admiration to which they feel themselves entitled. Their song varies with the season, but it is in the early spring their efforts are the most successful, and we are most disposed to admire the beauty and harmony of their voices. Can anything be more delicious than the warbling of the Linnet, the piping of the Goldfinch, slowly swelling from their leafy bower, or the melodious cadence of the Nightingale, as it breaks the silence of the woodland during the serene nights of leafy June? Our landscape would be sad and mute indeed without these graceful inhabitants of the air, which give so much animation to country life and solitary rambles. In the silence of night, when all nature sleeps and life seems suspended, all at once certain notes of harmony rise from under the dense foliage, as if to protest against the universal silence. It is sometimes a plaintive cry, prolonged into a stifled sigh, now a continuous warbling, now a lively song, gay and melodious, which the whole forest re-echoes to. When the darkness of night gives place to the first dawn of day--when the soft gleam of Aurora has appeared on the horizon, all is transformed, all is vivified on the new-born earth, lately asleep and apparently deserted. The larger birds rise higher and higher in the air, till they are lost in the clouds. The small birds hop from branch to branch with joyous gambols, communicating a movement of happiness and content over all nature. What a wonderful variety of music issues from them--what dazzling brilliancy and variety deck their plumage--what a charm pervades the whole scene, enlivened by these living flowers flitting about in intense enjoyment, hovering, traversing, and embellishing the air! Be it a Titmouse, which seems to spend its life suspended from the branch of a tree; or the Fly Catcher, on the other hand, always perched; the Lark, performing its graceful circles in the air as it rises higher and higher, pouring forth its melodious song more vigorously with each circle described; the Thrush, which runs along the grassy path, watching for its prey, or the House Sparrow chirping from the straw-built roof, or the Robin warbling from some leafless bower--how completely the little winged wanderers decorate the landscape and improve the picture with their innocent gambols!