THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS. 31 



was suddenly broken by a strain so rapid 

 and gushing, and touched with such a wild, 

 sylvan plaintiveness, that I listened in amaze- 

 ment. And so shy and coy was the little 

 minstrel, that I came twice to the woods be- 

 fore I was sure to whom I was listening. In 

 summer he is one of those birds of the deep 

 northern forests, that, like the speckled Can- 

 ada warbler and the hermit-thrush, only the 

 privileged ones hear. 



The distribution of plants in a given local- 

 ity is not more marked and defined than that 

 of the birds. Show a botanist a landscape, 

 and he will tell you where to look for the 

 lady's-slipper, the columbine, or the harebell. 

 On the same principles the ornithologist will 

 direct you where to look for the greenlets, 

 the wood-sparrow, or the chewink. In ad- 

 joining counties, in the same latitude, and 

 equally inland, but possessing a different 

 geological formation and different forest-tim- 

 ber, you will observe quite a different class 

 of birds. In a land of the beech and sugar- 

 maple I do not find the same songsters that 

 I know where thrive the oak, chestnut, and 

 laurel. In going from a district of the Old 

 Red Sandstone to where I walk upon the 

 old Plutonic Rock, not fifty miles distant, 



