M UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



is one of the earliest spring birds of passage, visiting 

 the neighborhood of Philadelphia about the middle of 

 March. We have seldom hard frosts after the arrival 

 of this bird, which seems to give a pretty confident as- 

 surance to the farmer that he may very soon begin to 

 open the ground and plant." 



Not so accommodating are the pee-wees of to-day. 

 They have a trick of coming even in February, and, if 

 there be sunshine, sing suggestively of early spring; but 

 I have never known their cheery j9ee loee to escape the 

 sad change to dreary Ah^ me! before the ethereal mild- 

 ness of the poet's spring proved a matter of fact. Tliere 

 lives no farmer now that holds the pee-wee either a 

 weather-prophet or a barometer. 



I do not know how often the learned doctor was 

 about, in winter, to see, but I suspect tliat then, as now, 

 there were pee-wees beyond the city's limits at earlier 

 dates than he mentions; if not, there has been wrought 

 a curious change in their habits. 



For years it has been a source of amusement to see 

 how promptly the early pee-wees accommodate them- 

 selves to that change to wintry conditions which is sure, 

 sooner or later, to follow their arrival. March frosts or 

 a snowstorm drives them from their perches on the leaf- 

 less branches to the roomy shelter of empty out-build- 

 ings, and here they find a suflficiency of food by hunting 

 the ever-present spiders and various forms of dormant 

 insect life. 



Of course such a change brings them into conflict 

 with the quick-tempered Carolina wrens, and the battles 

 are both long and loud. The wrens scream their dis- 



