On these trees rugged oak and orange grow side by side. the wild grape-vine, laden with fruit, hangs in fibrous festoons thick and strong as cables. Or, strolling on the banks of the river, you may hear the raftinen blowing their signal horns; or you may waħder by the negro cabins, each with its garden and dovecot,-for the negro is allowed to sell his master vegetables, fruit, and poultry. But often my own taste led me to the wild swamps round Turtle Cove, or to some of the more retired inlets and bayous. Here, stepping cautiously, for fear of snakes or alligators, you stride over some fallen tree that bridges the water, and pierce through avenues of ghostly cypresses, from which the moss hangs down in hoary drifts, like shreds of funeral banners in a chancel vault. Everywhere is a sense of desolation, terror, despair, and death. THE BOBLINK. THE happiest bird of an American spring, and one that rivals the European lark in my estimation, is the Boblincon, or Boblink, as he is commonly called. He arrives at that choice portion of our year, which, in this latitude, answers to the description of the month of May, so often given by the poets. With us, it begins about the middle of May, and lasts until nearly the middle of June. Earlier than this, winter is apt to return on its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of the year; and later than this, begin the parching, and panting, and dissolving heats of summer. But in this genial interval, nature is in all her freshness and fragrance: "the rains are over and gone, the flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." The trees are now in their fullest foliage and brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the clustered flowers of the laurel; the air is perfumed by the sweetbrier and the wild rose; the meadows are enamelled with clover-blossoms; while the young apple, the peach, and the plum, begin to swell, and the cherry to glow, among the green leaves. This is the chosen season of revelry of the Boblink. He comes amidst the pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms of the freshest and sweetest meadows; and is most in song when the clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long flaunting weed, and as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich tinkling notes; crowding one upon another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the same rapturous character. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a tree, begins his song as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters tremulously down to the earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own music. Sometimes he is in pursuit of his mate; always in full song, as if he would win her by his melody; and always with the same appearance of intoxication and delight. Further observation and experience have given me a different idea of this little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart for the benefit of my schoolboy readers, who may regard him with the same unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted, he was sacred from injury; the very schoolboy would not fling a stone at him, and the merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain. But mark the difference. As the year advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and the spring fades into summer, he gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits; doffs his poetical suit of black, assumes a russet, dusty garb, and sinks to the gross enjoyments of common vulgar birds. His notes no longer vibrate on the ear; he is stuffing himself with the seeds of the tall weeds on which he lately swung and chanted so melodiously. He has become a gourmand; with him now there is nothing like the "joys of the table." In a little while he grows tired of plain, homely fare, and is off on a gastronomical* tour in quest of foreign luxuries. We next hear of him with myriads of his kind, banqueting among the reeds of the Delaware, and grown corpulent with good feeding. He has changed his name in travelling. Boblincon no more-he is the Reedbird now, the much-sought-for titbit of Pennsylvanian epicures; the rival in unlucky fame of the ortolan! Wherever he goes, pop! pop! pop! every rusty firelock in the country is blazing away. He sees his companions falling by thousands around him. Does he take warning and reform?-Alas! not he. In * Gastronomical, feeding, gluttonous. corrigible epicure! again he wings his flight. The riceswamps of the south invite him. He gorges himself among them almost to bursting; he can scarcely fly for corpulency. He has once more changed his name, and is now the famous Rice-bird of the Carolinas. Last stage of his career; behold him spitted with dozens of his corpulent companions, and served up, a vaunted dish, on the table of some Southern gastronome! Such is the story of the Boblink; once spiritual, musical, admired, the joy of the meadows, and the favorite bird of spring; finally, a gross little sensualist, who expiates his sensuality in the larder. His story contains a moral, worthy the attention of all little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined and intellectual pursuits which raised him to so high a pitch of popularity during the early part of his career; but to eschew all tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence which brought this mistaken little bird to an untimely end. Irving. THE MOCKING-BIRD OF AMERICA. THE plumage of the Mocking-bird, though none of the homeliest, has nothing gaudy or brilliant in it, and, had he nothing else to recommend him, would scarcely entitle him to notice; but his figure is well proportioned and even handsome. The ease, elegance, and rapidity of his movements, the animation of his eye, and the intelligence he displays in listening and laying up lessons from almost every species of the feathered creation within his hearing, are really surprising, and mark the peculiarity of his genius. To these qualities we may add that of a voice, full, strong, and musical, and capable of almost every modulation, from the clear mellow tones of the wood-thrush to the savage scream of the bald eagle. In measure and accent he faithfully follows his originals. In force and sweetness of expression he greatly improves upon them. In his native groves, mounted on the top of a tall bush, or a half-grown tree, in the dawn of a dewy morning, while the woods are already vocal with a multitude of warblers, his admirable song rises pre-eminent over every competitor. The ear can listen to his music alone, to which that of all the others seems a mere accompaniment. Neither is this strain altogether imitative. His own native notes, which are easily distinguishable by such as are well acquainted with those of our various song birds, are bold and full, and varied seemingly beyond all limits. They consist of short expressions of two, three, or at the most five or six syllables; generally interspersed with imitations, and all of them uttered with great emphasis and rapidity, and continued with undiminished ardor for half an hour or an hour at a time. His expanded wings and tail glistening with white, and the buoyant gaiety of his action, arrest the eye as his song most irresistibly does the ear. He sweeps round with enthusiastic ecstasy-he mounts and descends as his song swells or dies away; and, as my friend Mr. Bartram has beautifully expressed it, "he bounds aloft with the celerity of an arrow, as if to recover or recall his very soul, expired in the last elevated strain." While thus exerting himself, a bystander destitute of sight would suppose that the whole feathered tribe had assembled together on a trial of skill, each striving to produce his utmost effect, so perfect are his imitations. He many times deceives the sportsman, and sends him in search of birds that perhaps are not within miles of him, but whose notes he exactly imitates; even birds themselves are frequently imposed on by this admirable mimic, and are decoyed by the fancied calls of their mates; or dive, with precipitation, into the depths of thickets at the scream of what they suppose to be the sparrow hawk. The mocking-bird loses little of the power and energy of his song by confinement. In his domesticated state, when he commences his career of song, it is impossible to stand |