54 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 



lowed the bird and its companion until they flew 

 from bush to bush into a maple. They were 

 bright iron-rust color on their tails, rumps, and 

 wings, and their white breasts were thickly 

 marked with arrowheads of the same pronounced 

 shade. In size, they outranked an English 

 sparrow by about one fifth. They were fox 

 sparrows. In plumage, song, and character, 

 these sparrows are among the most favored of 

 American birds. 



Leaving the lowlands, I ascended the heavily 

 wooded ledges, of which Turkey or One Pine 

 Hill is the best known. Concealed within 

 them is a deep yet sunny ravine where hepatica 

 grows, and over which in the tops of lofty pines 

 crows, hawks, and gray squirrels make their 

 nests. I was welcomed to this sylvan glen by 

 a brown rabbit, who permitted me to come 

 within a yard of him before displaying his cotton 

 tail in flight. Hepatica was not in bloom, but, 

 rising between its trilobate leaves of last year's 

 growth, nearly an inch of new sprout promised 

 early flowers. From the middle of the dancing 

 brook at the bottom of the ravine to the stems 

 of the great pines at its summit, the melting- 

 snow had exposed to view old vegetation, hold- 

 ing new-born life in its protecting arms. In the 

 brook, hundreds of heads of skunk-cabbage 

 could be counted. From the overhanging rocks, 



