[For Merry’s Museum.]
The Blue-Bird.
About the beginning, or early in the month of March, in Connecticut and Massachusetts, comes the delightful blue-bird. “Everybody loves the blue-bird,” says the Rev. Dr. Peabody, in his Report on the Birds of Massachusetts. And Mr. Wilson remarks of him, “As one of the first messengers of spring, bringing the charming tidings to our very doors, he bears his own recommendation always along with him, and meets with a hearty welcome from everybody.”
The blue-bird has been so beautifully described by other writers, and so well known, that I shall do little else than quote from others, and principally from Wilson, who is perhaps unrivalled in his description of birds.
He has written a poetical account of him, which is so interesting and beautiful, and which so few persons, especially children, have an opportunity of reading in his beautiful work on American Ornithology, that I am tempted to transcribe the whole of it for the readers of Merry’s Museum, young and old.
“When Winter’s cold tempests and snows are no more,
Green meadows and brown furrow’d fields re-appearing,
The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore,
And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steering;
When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing,