I am attracted by another warble in the same locality, and
experience a like difficulty in getting a good view of the author of
it. It is quite a noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds
well amid the old trees. In the upland woods of beech and maple it
is a more familiar sound than in these solitudes. On taking the bird
in hand, one cannot help exclaiming, "How beautiful!" So tiny and
elegant, the smallest of the warblers; a delicate blue back, with a
slight bronze-colored triangular spot between the shoulders; upper
mandible black; lower mandible yellow as gold; throat yellow,
becoming a dark bronze on the breast. Blue yellow-back he is called,
though the yellow is much nearer a bronze. He is remarkably delicate
and beautiful,--the handsomest as he is the smallest of the warblers
known to me. It is never without surprise that I find amid these
rugged, savage aspects of nature creatures so fairy and delicate.
But such is the law. Go to the sea or climb the mountain, and with
the ruggedest and the savagest you will find likewise the fairest
and the most delicate. The greatness and the minuteness of nature
pass all understanding.

Ever since I entered the woods, even while listening to the lesser
songsters, or contemplating the silent forms about me, a strain has
reached my ears from out the depths of the forest that to me is the
finest sound in nature,--the song of the hermit thrush. I often hear
him thus a long way off, sometimes over a quarter of a mile away,
when only the stronger and more perfect parts of his music reach me;
and through the general chorus of wrens and warblers I detect this
sound rising pure and serene, as if a spirit from some remote height
were slowly chanting a divine accompaniment. This song appeals to
the sentiment of the beautiful in me, and suggests a serene
religious beatitude as no other sound in nature does. It is perhaps