IN THE HEMLOCKS. 



MOST people receive with incredulity a 

 statement of the number of birds that an- 

 nually visit our climate. Very few even are 

 aware of half the number that spend the 

 summer in their own immediate vicinity. 

 We little suspect, when we walk in the 

 woods, whose privacy we are intruding upon, 

 what rare and elegant visitants from 

 Mexico, from Central and South America, 

 and from the islands of the sea are holding 

 their reunions in the branches over our heads, 

 or pursuing their pleasure on the ground 

 before us. 



I recall the altogether admirable and shin- 

 ing family which Thoreau dreamed he saw 

 in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, 

 which Spaulding did not know lived there, 

 and which were not put out when Spaulding, 

 whistling, drove his team through their 

 lower halls. They did not go into society in 

 the village ; they were quite well ; they had 



