ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 153 



jungle of scrub oak and saw palmetto. Blue 

 jays and crested flycatchers were doing 

 their best to outscream one another, with 

 the odds in favor of the flycatchers, and 

 a few smaller birds were singing, especially 

 two or three summer tanagers, as many 

 yellow-throated warblers, and a ruby-crowned 

 kinglet. In one part of the wood, near 

 what I took to be an old city reservoir, I 

 came upon a single white-throated sparrow 

 and a humming-bird, the latter a strangely 

 uncommon sight in Tallahassee, where, of 

 all the places I have ever seen, it ought to 

 find itself in clover. Here, too, were a pair 

 of Carolina wrens, just now in search of 

 a building-site, and conducting themselves 

 exactly in the manner of bluebirds intent 

 on such business ; peeping into every hole 

 that offered itself, and then, after the brief- 

 est interchange of opinion, unfavorable 

 on the female's part, if we may guess, 

 concluding to look a little farther. 



As I struck the road again, a man came 

 along on horseback, and we fell into conver- 

 sation about the country. " A lovely coun- 

 try," he called it, and I agreed with him. 

 He inquired where I was from, and 1 men- 



