his drum slung very high.  In this drum, or by the aid of it, the sound is produced.  Generally the note is very feeble at first, as if the frost was not yet all out of the creature’s throat, and only one voice will be heard, some prophet bolder than all the rest, or upon whom the quickening ray of spring has first fallen.  And it often happens that he is stoned for his pains by the yet unpacified element, and is compelled literally to “shut up” beneath a fall of snow or a heavy frost.  Soon, however, he lifts up his voice again with more confidence, and is joined by others and still others, till in due time, say toward the last of the month, there is a shrill musical uproar, as the sun is setting, in every marsh and bog in the land.  It is a plaintive sound, and I have heard people from the city speak of it as lonesome and depressing, but to the lover of the country it is a pure spring melody.  The little piper will sometimes climb a bulrush, to which he clings like a sailor to a mast, and send forth his shrill call.  There is a Southern species, heard when you have reached the Potomac, whose note is far more harsh and crackling.  To stand on the verge of a swamp vocal with these, pains and stuns the ear.  The call of the Northern species is far more tender and musical. [Footnote:  The Southern species is called the green hyla.  I have since heard them in my neighborhood on the Hudson.]

Then is there anything like a perfect April morning?  One hardly knows what the sentiment of it is, but it is something very delicious.  It is youth and hope.  It is a new earth and a new sky.  How the air transmits sounds, and what an awakening, prophetic character all sounds have!  The distant barking of a dog, or the lowing of a cow, or the crowing of a cock, seems from out the heart of Nature, and to be a call to come forth.  The great sun appears to have been reburnished, and there is something in his first glance above the eastern hills, and the way his eye-beams dart right and left and smite the rugged mountains into gold, that quickens the pulse and inspires the heart.

Across the fields in the early morning I hear some of the rare April birds,—­the chewink and the brown thrasher.  The robin, the bluebird, the song sparrow, the phoebe-bird, come in March; but these two ground-birds are seldom heard till toward the last of April.  The ground-birds are all tree-singers or air-singers; they must have an elevated stage to speak from.  Our long-tailed thrush, or thrasher, like its congeners the catbird and the mockingbird, delights in a high branch of some solitary tree, whence it will pour out its rich and intricate warble for an hour together.  This bird is the great American chipper.  There is no other bird that I know of that can chip with such emphasis and military decision as this yellow-eyed songster.  It is like the click of a giant gunlock.  Why is the thrasher so stealthy?  It always seems to be going about on tiptoe.  I never knew it to steal anything, and yet it skulks and hides like a fugitive from justice.  One never sees it flying aloft in the air and traversing the world openly, like most birds, but it darts along fences and through bushes as if pursued by a guilty conscience.  Only when the musical fit is upon it does it come up into full view, and invite the world to hear and behold.