96 ALONG THE HILLSBOROUGH. 
said, “and we won’t tell him a damned 
thing.* I fear there was nothing distinc- 
tively Southern about that. 
Here, too, in the heart of the town, was 
a magnificent cluster of live-oaks, worth 
coming to Florida to see; far-spreading, full 
of ferns and air plants, and heavy with 
hanging moss. Day after day I went 
out to admire them. Under them was a 
neglected orange grove, and in one of the 
orange-trees, amid the glossy foliage, ap- 
peared my first summer tanager. It was 
a royal setting, and the splendid vermilion- 
red bird was worthy of it. Among the 
oaks I walked in the evening, listening to 
the strange low chant of the chuck-will’s- 
widow, —a name which the owner himself 
pronounces with a rest after the first syl- 
lable. Once, for two or three days, the 
trees were amazingly full of blue yellow- 
backed warblers. Numbers of them, a 
dozen at least, could be heard singing at 
once directly over one’s head, running up 
the scale not one after another, but literally 
in unison. Here the tufted titmouse, the 
very soul of monotony, piped and piped 
and piped, as if his diapason stop were 
