76 IN THE HEMLOCKS. 



clucking call, and the young move cautiously in the 

 iirection. Let me step never so carefully from my 

 biding-place, and all Sounds instantly cease, and I 

 search in vain for either parent or young. 



The partridge {Bonasa umhellus) is one of our 

 most native and characteristic birds. The woods 

 seem good to be in where I find him. He gives a 

 habitable air to the forest, and one feels as if the 

 righful occupant was really at home. The woods 

 wrhere I do not find him seem to want something, as 

 if suffering from some neglect of Nature. And then 

 he is such a splendid success, so hardy and vigorous. 

 I think he enjoys the cold and the snow. His wings 

 leem to rustle with more fervency in midwinter. If 

 the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm, 

 he will complacently sit down and allow himself to 

 be snowed under. Approaching him at such times, 

 he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scat- 

 tering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming 

 away through the woods like a bomb-shell, — a pict- 

 are of native spirit and success. 



His drum is one of the most welcome and beauti' 

 ful sounds of spring. Scarcely have the trees ex- 

 panded their buds, when, in the still April mornings, 

 or toward nightfall, when you hear the hum of his 

 devoted wings. He selects not, as you would pre- 

 dict, a dry and resinous log, but a decayed and 

 crumbling one, seeming to give the preference to old 

 oak-logs that are partly blended with the soil. U 

 \ log to his taste cannot be found he sets up his altai 



