\> oods. In recent years, the ax has driven its keen edg< 

 through most of the hue large trees, and the plow has loosened 

 the roots and transformed sections of the original forest into 

 grassy helds. Hut still there is a considerable part of this 

 virgin forest left. — Perhaps eighteen acres in one tract, and 

 around the end of the spur and over its crown and down into 

 the hollow on the opposite side a patch of about forty acres 

 remains. 



All around the border of this woods are pasture lands, 

 chiefly grown up in places with blackberry and raspberry 

 briers, crab-apple and hawthorn bushes, wild strawberry vines 

 and luxuriant blue grass, intermingled with thistles, white- 

 top, blue-devil and other rank growing weeds, which are spring- 

 ing into a good start when the Golden-wings choose a nest lo- 

 cation among them. 



This ridge is abundantly blessed with water, several springs 

 giving out a cold sparkling stream throughout the hot sum- 

 mer months ; — two of these, and the best ones, quite near the 

 top. — At many other places there are small swamps or boggy 

 ground. Nowhere is the hid very s^eep, and the held below 

 the line of the fore-t becomes in some places, nearly level, 

 until the bluff overlooking the stream is reached, and here is 

 an abrupt break from ten to twenty feet in height, with rock 

 ledges protruding in places, and in some places thickets and 

 remnants of the original forest. * 



All along the lower border of the woods, and about the 

 clumps of bushes in the helds are the haunts of the Golden- 

 wings. Here is where 1 first see the birds in the spring, and is 

 the region most productive during the nesting season. Gen- 

 erally along the outskirts of the woods, — just where the vege- 

 tation changes to briers, bushes aari elders, with a goodly 

 mingling of grass, the birds select a site for a nest. Former- 

 ly about six pairs nested at random throughout this area, 

 but since so much of the woodland has disappeared, not more 

 than three pairs can be found. 



