IN THE HEMLOCKS. 69 



may be inferred from the sharp, braided 

 track of the gray squirrel upon the new 

 snow ! Ah ! in nature is the best discipline. 

 How wood-life sharpens the senses, giving 

 a new power to the eye, the ear, the nose ! 

 And are not the rarest and most exquisite 

 songsters wood-birds? 



Everywhere in these solitudes I am greeted 

 with the pensive, almost pathetic note of the 

 wood-pewee. The pewees are the true fly- 

 catchers, and are easily identified. They 

 are very characteristic birds, have strong 

 family traits, and pugnacious dispositions. 

 They are the least attractive or elegant birds 

 of our fields or forest. Sharp-shouldered, 

 big-headed, short-legged, of no particular 

 color, of little elegance in flight or move- 

 ment, with a disagreeable flirt of the tail, 

 always quarrelling with their neighbors and 

 with one another, no birds are so little cal- 

 culated to excite pleasurable emotions in the 

 beholder, or to become objects of human in- 

 terest and affection. The king-bird is the 

 best dressed member of the family, but he 

 is a braggart ; and, though always snubbing 

 his neighbors, is an arrant coward, and shows 

 the white feather at the slightest display of 

 pluck in his antagonist. 1 have seen him 



