90 FAMILIAR FEATURES OF THE ROADSIDE. 



moonlight (not sun!) it was possible for the great 

 Beethoven to so exactly reproduce the music which 

 one hears at night in midsummer among the High- 

 lands of the Hudson in the vicinity of Anthony's 

 Nose and Storm King without ever having set his 

 foot upon American soil it is difficult to imagine! 

 For there are no singing fields in the old country, 

 comparatively speaking; the meadows of England, 

 Tuscany, or Switzerland in May, June, or August 

 are silent that, at least, is my remembrance of them. 

 And I may also add that a field in the White Moun- 

 tain region of New Hampshire is only half musical, 

 again comparatively speaking. The meadow music 

 which one may hear at twilight on Long Island, 

 Staten Island, in the Catskill Mountains, in the 

 Highlands of the Hudson, around Lake Mahopac in 

 Putnam County, and in the vicinity of Niagara Falls, 

 N. Y., in Saddle Eiver, Bergen County, and the 

 counties of Monmouth, Atlantic, and Salem in New 

 Jersey, and in various parts of Delaware, Maryland, 

 and Virginia, is far beyond what one will hear in 

 either Maine or New Hampshire. I refer exclusively 

 to insect music. On or about the first of September, 

 when the wooded slopes of the Navesink Highlands, 

 New Jersey, are thrilling with the songs of crickets 

 and katydids, the woods and fields of northern New 

 .Hampshire are almost silent. But we can not expect 



