May 



the past, as also the snow-birds ; the hermit 

 thrush, too, had gone north, but in a sense the 

 wood thrush took its place, and has now begun to 

 sing the queen of song for the remainder of the 

 season. The superabundant yellow-rumps have 

 slipped away until hardly one is left. For the 

 past week there has been hardly anything but 

 females to be seen of this species, and they suf- 

 fer as painfully as any of their kind from the 

 general law compelling the gentler sex to be the 

 dull and bleached-out specimens that they are. 

 In favor of this ruling of Providence it must be 

 confessed that their more neutral tints, in mak- 

 ing them less conspicuous, are a safeguard from 

 many dangers ; and this, especially in the nesting 

 season, conduces materially to the perpetuation 

 of the class. But the arrangement reverses 

 some of the notions of propriety that obtain in 

 the human race, and makes perfect dudes of 

 some of the males. 



Lest any reader should weary of the repeated 

 allusions to the warblers, it is well for him to 

 be assured that there is no such monotony in 

 discovering them. With all their resemblances 

 to each other they are in so many ways distinct, 

 that each new discovery in this family is as pleas- 

 urable a surprise as if it belonged to some other 



1 S9 



