wren being preeminently so. Our sparrows, too, all have sweet,
plaintive ditties, with but little sprightliness or compass. The
English house sparrow has no song at all, but a harsh chatter that is
unmatched among our birds. But what a hardy, prolific, pugnacious
little wretch it is! These birds will maintain themselves where our
birds will not live at all, and a pair of them will lie down in the
gutter and fight like dogs. Compared with this miniature John Bull, the
voice and manners of our common sparrow are gentle and retiring. The
English sparrow is a street gamin, our bird a timid rustic.

The English robin redbreast is tallied in this country by the bluebird,
which was called by the early settlers of New England the blue robin.
The song of the British bird is bright and animated, that of our bird
soft and plaintive.

The nightingale stands at the head in Barrington's table, and is but
little short of perfect in all the qualities. We have no one bird that
combines« such strength or vivacity with such melody. The mockingbird
doubtless surpasses it in variety and profusion of notes; but falls
short, I imagine, in sweetness and effectiveness. The nightingale will
sometimes warble twenty seconds without pausing to breathe, and when
the condition of the air is favorable, its song fills a space a mile in
diameter. There are, perhaps, songs in our woods as mellow and
brilliant, as is that of the closely allied species, the water-thrush;
but our bird's song has but a mere fraction of the nightingale's volume
and power.

Strength and volume of voice, then, seem to be characteristic of the
English birds, and mildness and delicacy of ours. How much the
thousands of years of contact with man, and familiarity with artificial