and silently grown like the grass and the moss, it could not have been more nicely adjusted to its place and surroundings.  There is absolutely nothing to tell the eye it is there.  Generally a few spears of dry grass fall down from the turf above and form a slight screen before it.  How commonly and coarsely it begins, blending with the debris that lies about, and how it refines and comes into form as it approaches the centre, which is modeled so perfectly and lined so softly!  Then, when the full complement of eggs is laid, and incubation has fairly begun, what a sweet, pleasing little mystery the silent old bank holds!

The song sparrow, whose nest I have been describing, displays a more marked individuality in its song than any bird with which I am acquainted.  Birds of the same species generally all sing alike, but I have observed numerous song sparrows with songs peculiarly their own.  Last season, the whole summer through, one sang about my grounds like this:  swee-e-t, swee-e-t, swee-e-t, bitter. Day after day, from May to September, I heard this strain, which I thought a simple but very profound summing-up of life, and wondered how the little bird had learned it so quickly.  The present season, I heard another with a song equally original, but not so easily worded.  Among a large troop of them in April, my attention was attracted to one that was a master songster,—­some Shelley or Tennyson among his kind.  The strain was remarkably prolonged, intricate, and animated, and far surpassed anything I ever before heard from that source.

But the most noticeable instance of departure from the standard song of a species I ever knew of was in the case of a wood thrush.  The bird sang, as did the sparrow, the whole season through, at the foot of my lot near the river.  The song began correctly and ended correctly; but interjected into it about midway was a loud, piercing, artificial note, at utter variance with the rest of the strain.  When my ear first caught this singular note, I started out, not a little puzzled, to make, as I supposed, a new acquaintance, but had not gone far when I discovered whence it proceeded.  Brass amid gold, or pebbles amid pearls, are not more out of place than was this discordant scream or cry in the melodious strain of the wood thrush.  It pained and startled the ear.  It seemed as if the instrument of the bird was not under control, or else that one note was sadly out of tune, and, when its turn came, instead of giving forth one of those sounds that are indeed like pearls, it shocked the ear with a piercing discord.  Yet the singer appeared entirely unconscious of the defect; or had he grown used to it, or had his friends persuaded him that it was a variation to be coveted?  Sometimes, after the brood had hatched and the bird’s pride was at its full, he would make a little triumphal tour of the locality, coming from under the hill quite up to the house, and flaunting his cracked instrument in the face of whoever would listen.  He did not return again the next season; or, if he did, the malformation of his song was gone.