SPRING 117 



Happy Franconia! This year, if never 

 before, it had all five of our New England 

 Hylocichlae singing in its woods : the veery 

 and the hermit everjrwhere in the lower 

 country, the wood thrush in the mai^le for- 

 est before mentioned, the olive-back through- 

 out the Notch and its neighborhood, and the 

 gray-cheek on Lafayette ; a quintette hard 

 to match, I venture to think, anywhere 

 on the footstool. And after them — I do 

 not say with them — were winter wrens, 

 boboHnks, rose-breasted grosbeaks, purple 

 finches, solitary vireos, vesper sparrows, field 

 sparrows, white-throated sparrows, song spar- 

 rows, catbirds, robins, orioles, tanagers, and 

 a score or two beside. 



One other bright circumstance I am 

 bound in honor to speak of, — the abun- 

 dance of swallows ; a state of affairs greatly 

 unlike anything to be met with in my part 

 of Massachusetts: cliff swallows and bam 

 swallows in crowds, and sand martins and 

 tree swallows by no means uncommon. But 

 for the absence of black martins, — a fa- 

 mous colony of which the tourist may see at 

 Concord, while the train waits, — here would 



