70 THE MOSQUITO. 



now began to throw the long last eastward shadows, 

 those ever-attendant satellites of an unclouded and a 

 daily reign. In the silence of these grand solitudes how 

 interesting was it to me to hear their stillness occasionally 

 broken by the cries of birds speaking to me, not as in 

 England, but in voices that gave rne not their name ! 

 Among them, though, I recognized the shrill and occa 

 sionally hoarse cries of the American crow, sometimes 

 reminding me of the English jackdaw, and at others of 

 the carrion crow. The woodpeckers I traced by their 

 stationary cry from the stems of trees ; there were no 

 birds then in song. 



As I sat on one of these fallen trees, the hum of what 

 seemed to me a very large gnat reminded me that I was 

 in America, and, according to the intelligence afforded 

 by my English friends, about to^be subjected to insect 

 appetite and persecution. I sat still to await the ap 

 proach of this novel foe, who was so kind as to herald 

 his advance by a very distinct trumpet sound, and on he 

 came, a giant gnat, about twice the size of an English 

 one (the mosquito is nothing more), when, on attempting 

 to settle on my cheek, he met with the palm of my hand 

 from his rear, and his body was soon given up for inspec 

 tion. I sat some little time after this, when a slight 

 whistling of wings, coming from behind me and over the 

 trees, made me snatch up my gun from its recumbent 

 position across my knees, and as it came to the level and 

 discharge at the same moment, I knew what I shot at, 

 and heard my man exclaim, " Pigeons ! " It was a very 

 difficult snap-shot, and though nothing fell, something 

 told me that the aim was correct, so having loaded I fol 

 lowed the line of the seven wild pigeons. In a very short 

 distance the sudden flap of a wing among boughs told me 



