278 BLACK-AND-WHITE CREEPING WARBLER. 



protect the gardens and orchards against their numberless 

 pests; the Warblers, Vireos, Creepers and Nuthatches guard 

 our noble forests from the topmost foliage to the lower 

 bark-crevices; while even the Hawks and Owds contribute 

 not a little to the same great work of keeping in check the 

 swarming hosts of insects. The feathered tribes are there- 

 fore our most useful allies against that part of animated 

 nature which more than any other endangers our welfare, 

 namely, those insects which threaten our very subsistence. 

 It may be doubted whether the indiscriminate slaughter of 

 any of our birds is wise. 



Changing my position somewhat in this great swamp, I 

 come into a wet slashing, having a dense second growth of 

 evergreens and various kinds of hard wood. O, the native 

 vines and wild flowers which everywhere abound! How 

 completely that Virginia creeper has enveloped the trunk 

 and larger limbs of yonder tall elm, its digitate or hand- 

 shaped leaves of five pointed and serrate leaflets of dark and 

 glossy green, covering the bark like a thick luxuriant mantle, 

 and making the tree appear at once most graceful and 

 superb. That virgin's bower entwining its petioles so ele- 

 gantly around a clump of bushes, either in its bloom so like 

 a fall of light snow-flakes, or in the heavy plumes of its 

 fruitage, may vie with any member of its family, even the 

 gay hybrids of the Old World. The remains of that large 

 tree — a very monarch of the forest, fallen generations ago 

 perhaps — is enrobed in. a thick plumose covering of hyp- 

 num mosses, variegated with star-flowers and mitreworts, in 

 a manner which defies description. And what shall we say 

 of the lady slippers, azalias, and honeysuckles, just about 

 to unfold their charms? Art can do much in the way of 

 placing and adjusting nature's beauties, but what can equal 

 the grace of wild vines, plants and flowers in their native 



