The bullock starteth.
The buck verteth,
Merrily sings the cuckoo,
Cuckoo, cuckoo;
Well sings the cuckoo,
Mayest thou never cease.''


III

I think it will be found, on the whole, that the European birds are a
more hardy and pugnacious race than ours, and that their song-birds
have more vivacity and power, and ours more melody and plaintiveness.
In the song of the skylark, for instance, there is little or no melody,
but wonderful strength and copiousness. It is a harsh strain near at
hand, but very taking when showered down from a height of several
hundred feet.

Daines Barrington, the naturalist of the last century, to whom White of
Selborne addressed so many of his letters, gives a table of the
comparative merit of seventeen leading song-birds of Europe, marking
them under the heads of mellowness, sprightliness, plaintiveness,
compass, and execution. In the aggregate, the songsters stand highest
in sprightliness, next in compass and execution, and lowest in the
other two qualities. A similar arrangement and comparison of our
songsters, I think, would show an opposite result,--that is, a
predominance of melody and plaintiveness. The British wren, for
instance, stands in Barrington's table as destitute of both these
qualities; the reed sparrow also. Our wren-songs, on the contrary, are
gushing and lyrical, and more or less melodious,--that of the winter