AN IDLER ON MISSIONARY RIDGE. 9 



The principal excitement of the morning 

 was a glimpse of a Kentucky warbler, a bird 

 most peculiarly desired. I had finished my 

 jaunt, and was standing beside the bramble 

 patch not far from the railway, where I had 

 seen the hooded warbler the day before, when 

 the splendid creature flashed into sight, saw 

 me, uttered a volley of quick, clear notes, 

 and vanished up the hillside. I ran after 

 him, but might as well have remained where 

 I was. " He is a beauty ! " I find written 

 in my notebook. And so he is, clothed 

 in lustrous olive and the most gorgeous of 

 yellows with trimmings of black, all in the 

 best of taste, with nothing patchy, nothing 

 fantastic or even fanciful. I was again im- 

 pressed with the abundance of chats, indigo- 

 birds, and white-eyed vireos. Bachman spar- 

 rows were numerous, also, in appropriate 

 localities, — dry and bushy, — and I noted a 

 bluebird, a yellow-throated vireo, and, shout- 

 ing from a dead treetop, a great crested fly- 

 catcher. 



My most vivid recollection of this second 

 visit, however, is of the power of the sun, an 

 old enemy of mine, by whom, in my igno- 

 rance of spring weather in Tennessee, I 



