Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/96

82 the notes of other birds in order to attract them within their reach. "Why then have I never heard them sing in the winter? I have seen seven or eight of them the past winter quite near. The birds which it imitated, if it imitated any this morning, were the catbird and the nuthatch, neither of which, probably, would it catch. The first is not here to catch. Hearing a peep I looked up and saw three or four birds passing which suddenly descended and settled on this oak top. They were robins, but the shrike instantly hid himself behind a bough, and in half a minute flew off to a walnut and alighted, as usual, on its very topmost twig, apparently afraid of its visitors. The robins kept their ground, one alighting on the very point which the shrike vacated. Is not this, then, probably the spring note or pairing song of the shrike? The first note which I heard from the robins far under the hill was "sveet sveet," suggesting a certain haste and alarm, and then a rich, hollow, somewhat plaintive peep or peep-eep-eep, as when in distress with young just flown. When you first see them alighted, they have a haggard, an anxious and hurried, look

The mystery of the life of plants is kindred with that of our own lives, and the physiologist must not presume to explain their growth