DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. a 
the more so, perhaps, because of a thick 
autumnal haze. It might be called excellent 
Christmas weather, I said to myself, when 
a naturally prudent man, no longer young, 
could sit perched upon a fence rail at the 
top of a hill, drinking in the beauties of the 
landscape. 
At the station, after my descent, I met a 
young man of the neighborhood. ‘Do you 
know why they call that Turkey Hill?” said 
I. “No, sir, I don’t,” he answered. I 
suggested that probably somebody had killed 
a wild turkey up there at some time or 
other. He looked politely incredulous. “I 
don’t think there are any wild turkeys up 
there,’”’ said he; “/ never saw any.” He 
was not more than twenty-five years old, and 
the last Massachusetts turkey was killed on 
Mount Tom in 1847, so that I had no doubt 
he spoke the truth. Probably he took me 
for a simple-minded fellow, while I thought 
nothing worse of him than that he was one of 
those people, so numerous and at the same 
time so much to be pitied, who have never 
studied ornithology. 
The 25th was warmer even than the 24th; 
and it, likewise, I spent upon the South 
