1. THE happiest bird of our spring, however, and one that rivals the European lark in my estimation, is the boblincoln, or bobolink, 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."

2. 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 with the sweet-brier and the wild-rose; the meadows are enameled with cloverblossoms; while the young apple, peach, and the plum begin to swell, and the cherry to glow among the green leaves.

3. This is the chosen season of revelry of the bobolink. He comes amid the pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and enjoyment, all song and sun

shine. 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.

4. 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. Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the bobolink was the envy of my boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather and the sweetest season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed to be mewed up during the livelong day in a school-room.

5. It seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me as he flew by in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how I envied him! No lessons, no task, no school; nothing but holiday, frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more versed in poetry, I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to the cuckoo :

"Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green,

Thy sky is ever clear;

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,

No winter in thy year.

"Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,

Companions of the spring."

6. Further observation and experience have given me a different idea of this feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart for the benefit of my young 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 school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain.

7. 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 enjoyment 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 gastronomic tour in quest of foreign luxuries.

8. 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 traveling. Boblincoln no more, he is the reed-bird now,

the much-sought-for tidbit 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. 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 some southern table.

9. Such is the story of the bobolink: 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.

A FLOCK of merry singing-birds were sporting in the grove; Some were warbling cheerily, and some were making

love :

There were Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, Con

quedle,

A livelier set was never led by tabor,1 pipe, or fiddle, —
Crying, "Phew, shew, Wadolincon, see, see, Bobolincon,
Down among the tickletops, hiding in the buttercups!
I know the saucy chap, I see his shining cap
Bobbing in the clover there, see, see, see!"

Up flies Bobolincon, perching on an apple-tree,
Startled by his rival's song, quickened by his raillery,
Soon he spies the rogue afloat, curveting 2 in the air,
And merrily he turns about, and warns him to beware!
"T is you that would a-wooing go, down among the

rushes O!

But wait a week, till flowers are cheery, wait a week, and ere you marry,

Be sure of a house wherein to tarry!

Wadolink, Whiskodink, Tom Denny, wait, wait, wait!"

Every one's a funny fellow; every one's a little mellow; Follow, follow, follow, follow, o'er the hill and in the hollow! Merrily, merrily, there they hie; now they rise and now

they fly;

They cross and turn, and in and out, and down in the middle, and wheel about,

With a "Phew, shew, Wadolincon! listen to me, Bobolincon !

Happy's the wooing that's speedily doing, that's speedily

doing,

That's merry and over with the bloom of the clover! Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, follow, follow me!"

WILSON FLAGG.

1 ta'bor, a small drum.

2 cur'vet-ing, bounding friskily.