MOCKING-BIRDS IX CONNECTICUT. 163 



in New England today or perhaps before that, when water 

 brought to life and motion by the summer sun poured 

 down through a moulin in the ice-sheet that covered the 

 land. 



In the dried bed of some small river we often see ridges 

 of water worn pebbles, large and small, that have been de- 

 posited by the water in springtime while the sand and silt 

 were carried further along. Similar pebble ridges are some- 

 times found in valleys where no water has been seen Avith- 

 in the memory of man except the brook that meanders 

 from side to side and carries its burden on to the river and 

 the sea. Such a valley with such pebble ridges is the one 

 through which Black Brook flows on its way to the Merri- 

 mack at Manchester. Here a farmer has his cornfield in 

 the bed of a post-glacial stream and sturdily hoes his corn 

 where once the mighty torrent rushed. It is not the owner 

 of the corn who is represented in the illustration, but one 

 more interested at that time in geology than agriculture 

 who consented to pose as the man with the hoe. 



Thus are our fields filled with ph3^siographic features 

 of interest and value. It happens that nearly all such 

 in this vicinity are a legac)' from the ice age. Man}' 

 more are worth mentioning but the}' will do for another 

 time. 



Mocking-Birds in Connecticut. 



Mary Hazen Arnold, whose writings are appreciated by 

 a large circle of readers, in a letter to the editoi of Nature 

 Study, asks : 



" Have any of your readers seen the mocking-bird as far 

 (or farther north in Connecticut) as Waterbury ? I saw 

 one here among the trees skirting the Naugatuck river 

 several times during the last week of July last, and while 

 South this winter at once recognized the bird as the visitor 

 of last summer. I have known of the bird nesting near 

 New Haven — but have not heard of its coming as far north 

 as this. *I shall watch for its coming next summer." 



