ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 153 
jungle of scrub oak and saw palmetto. Blue 
jays and crested flycatchers were doing 
their best to outscream one another, — with 
the odds in favor of the flycatchers, — and 
a few smaller birds were singing, especially 
two or three summer tanagers, as many 
yellow-throated warblers, and a ruby-ecrowned 
kinglet. In one part of the wood, near 
what I took to be an old city reservoir, I 
came upon a single white-throated sparrow 
and a humming-bird, — the latter a strangely 
uncommon sight in Tallahassee, where, of 
all the places I have ever seen, it ought to 
find itself in clover. Here, too, were a pair 
of Carolina wrens, just now in search of 
a building-site, and conducting themselves 
exactly in the manner of bluebirds intent 
on such business; peeping into every hole 
that offered itself, and then, after the brief. 
est interchange of opinion, — unfavorable 
on the female’s part, if we may guess, — 
concluding to look a little farther. 
As I struck the road again, a man came 
along on horseback, and we fell into conver- 
sation about the country. “A lovely coun- 
try,” he called it, and I agreed with him. 
He inquired where I was from, and I men- 
