AT NATURAL BRIDGE 239 



a road, and entered a second tract of hard- 

 wood forest. 



The trees were comfortably low, with 

 much convenient shrubbery, and after a lit- 

 tle, seeing myself at the centre of things, as 

 it were, I dropped into a seat and allowed 

 the birds to gather about me. At my back 

 was a bunch of white-throated sparrows. 

 From the same quarter a chat whistled now 

 and then, and white-breasted nuthatches and 

 a Carolina chickadee did likewise, the last 

 with a noticeable variation in his tune, 

 which had dwindled to three notes. Here, 

 as on the hill I had just left, wood pewees 

 and Acadian flycatchers announced them- 

 selves, in tones so dissimilar as to suggest 

 no hint of blood relationship. The wood 

 pewee is surely the gentleman of the family, 

 so far as the voice may serve as an indica- 

 tion of character. In dress and personal 

 appearance he is a flycatcher of the flycatch- 

 ers ; but what a contrast between his soft, 

 plaintive, exquisitely modulated whistle, the 

 very expression of refinement, and the wild, 

 rasping, over - emphatic vociferations that 

 characterize the family in general ! The 

 more praise to him. The Acadians seemed 



