A COTTON PLANTATION. 191 
more the muddy shore of the cane-swamp, 
where the yellowlegs and sandpipers were 
still feeding. That brought me to the road 
from which I had made my entry to the 
place some days before; but, being still 
unable to forego a splendid possibility, I 
recrossed the plantation, tarried again in 
the glade, sat again on the wooden fence (if 
that grosbeak only would show himself !), 
and thence went on, picking a few heads of 
handsome buffalo clover, the first I had ever 
seen, and some sprays of penstemon, till I 
came again to the six-barred gate and the 
Quincy road. At that point, as I now re- 
member, the air was full of vultures (carrion 
crows), a hundred or more, soaring over the 
fields in some fit of gregariousness. Along 
the road were white-crowned and white- 
throated sparrows (it was the 12th of April), 
orchard orioles, thrashers, summer tanagers, 
myrtle and paim warblers, cardinal gros- 
beaks, mocking -birds, kingbirds, logger- 
heads, yellow-throated vireos, and sundry 
others, but not the blue grosbeak, which 
would have been worth them all. 
Once back at the hotel, I opened my 
Coues’s Key to refresh my memory as to 
