BIRDS, FLOWERS, AND PEOPLE 115 



houses were quickly behind me, and I was 

 as truly in the woods as if I had made a 

 day's march from civilization. A straggling 

 town, with miles of outlying farms and pas- 

 turelands, through the sunny stretches of 

 which a man must make his way forenoon 

 and afternoon, is a state of things at once so 

 usual and so disheartening that the point 

 may well be among the earliest to be con- 

 sidered in planning a Southern vacation. 



In a new country an ornithologist thinks 

 first of all of the birds peculiar to it, if any 

 such there are ; and I was no sooner off the 

 hotel piazza for my first ante-breakfast stroll 

 at Highlands, than I was on the watch for 

 Carolina snowbirds and mountain solitary 

 vireos, two varieties (" subspecies " is the 

 more modern word) originally described a 

 few years ago, by Mr. Brewster, 1 from speci- 

 mens taken at this very place. I had gone 

 perhaps a quarter of a mile over the road 

 by which I had driven into the town, after 

 dark, on the evening before, when I was 

 conscious that a bird had flown out from 

 under the overhanging bank just behind me. 

 I turned hastily, and on the instant put my 

 1 The Auk, vol. iii. pp. 108 and 111. 



