54 IN THE HEMLOCKS. 



sons and daughters ; they neither wove nor 

 spun ; there was a sound as of suppressed 

 hilarity. 



I take it for granted that the forester was 

 only saying a pretty thing of the birds, 

 though I have observed that it does some- 

 times annoy them when Spaulding's cart 

 rumbles through their house. Generally, 

 however, they are as unconscious of Spauld- 

 ing as Spaulding is of them. 



Walking the other day in an old hemlock 

 wood, I counted over forty varieties of these 

 summer visitants, many of them common to 

 other woods in the vicinity, but quite a num- 

 ber peculiar to these ancient solitudes, and 

 not a few that are rare in any locality. It 

 is quite unusual to find so large a number 

 abiding in one forest, and that not a 

 large one, most of them nesting and spend- 

 ing the summer there. Many of those I 

 observed commonly pass this season much 

 farther north. But the geographical distri- 

 bution of birds is rather a climatical one. 

 The same temperature, though under differ- 

 ent parallels, usually attracts the same birds ; 

 difference in altitude being equivalent to the 

 difference in latitude. A given height above 

 the sea level under the parallel of thirty de- 



