9 



self is not over twenty acres in extent and of rough triangular 

 shape ; its length lying with the brook. The undergrowth 

 consists of witch-hazel shrubs, dogwood, ironwood, bean- 

 wood, scrubby beech and crab-apple bushes and wild grape 

 vines (the small, bitter variety) in profusion. 



The sloping hillside around the woods is used as pasture 

 land and is pretty generally grown up in brier clumps and 

 numerous crab-apple and hawthorn bushes. A large oak, a 

 chestnut and some locust trees still remain in the field. The 

 hill-top surrounding the hollow reaches far above the tops of 

 the tallest trees in the woods. Acres of the field on the north 

 side of the hollow are abloom with ox-eye daisies at the time 

 the birds are. nesting. 



On the margin of the woods the song of the male Golden- 

 wing is heard as he flits from tree to tree in his never tiring 

 search for insects. Somewhere outside the line of the forest, 

 but within the shadow of the trees, his nest is secreted away, 

 down among the grasses and young brier stalks. It may be 

 near the tree in which he sits or a hundred yards along the 

 border on either side, or across the forest to the other hill- 

 side. Anyway he seems contentedly believing his little mate 

 will not divulge the facts And unless a very diligent search is 

 made, the secret will remain with the birds to the end. 



Other localities of more restricted areas do not furnish this 

 protection, and to find the nest is an easy matter. 



At least two pairs haunt the outskirts of this forest and the 

 adjacent fields. 



Savers' Emerging from Rush's Hollow, at is junction with 

 Woods. Smith Creek, we stand facing the spur of a ridge 

 two hundred feet high and about one and a half 

 miles in length, the upper half of which, until a few years ago, 

 was heavily covered with mixed timber and undergrowth. This 

 ridge forms a part of the eastern slope of Smith Creek Valley, 

 and the wooded part has long been known to me as Sayers' 



