2CO BIRDS

nightingale is supreme. But some there are who, not
having heard the nightingale, have singers, they think,
as sweet, say among the mocking-birds of the Rocky
Mountains, also belonging to the thrush group. Let
us hear Theodore Roosevelt on this-matter. ‘On the
evening in question the moon was full. My host
kindly assigned me a room of which the windows
opened on a great magnolia tree, where, I was told, a
mocking-bird sang every night and all night long. I
went to my room about ten. The moonlight was
shining in at the open window, and the mocking-bird
was already in the magnolia. The great tree was
bathed in a flood of shining silver; I could see each
twig and mark every action of the singer, who was
pouring forth such a rapture of ringing melody as I
‘have never listened to before or since. Sometimes he
would perch motionless for many minutes, his body
quivering and thrilling with the outpour of music.
Then he would drop softly from twig to twig, until
the lowest limb was reached, when he would rise,
fluttering and leaping through the branches, his song
never ceasing for an instant until he reached the
summit of the tree and launched into the warm scent-
laden air, floating in spirals with outspread wings,
until, as if spent, he sank gently back into the tree
and down through the branches, while his song rose
into an ecstasy of ardour and passion. His voice
rang like a clarionet in rich full tones, and his exe-
cution covered the widest possible compass; theme
followed theme, a torrent of music, a swelling tide of
harmony in which scarcely any two bars were alike.
I stayed till midnight listening to him; he was