FOUR RED BIRDS. 115 



thrushes. The farmer looked for them wlien the apple- 

 trees were in bloom, and welcomed them, too, for to 

 hira they were trustworthy barometers. Did they not 

 say, " Wet, wet, wet !" and did it not shower sooner or 

 later? Surely no better weather-prophet could exist. 



What has happened in the past thirty years to have 

 influenced these birds is undeterminable ; but now sum- 

 mer after summer passes, and not more than one or two 

 are seen, and sometimes not one. Even when Wilson 

 wrote, seventy -five years ago, summer red -birds were 

 rare about Philadelphia, and that author says he had to 

 cross the river to Jersey to find them. This statement 

 may seem almost an absurd one at first, but it is really 

 not so. Jersey could boast of a beautiful bird, in abun- 

 dance, which was really rare across the river. Why 

 was this? If the physical geography of the east and 

 west sides of the river are compared, it will be found 

 that they are as radically different as they well can be, 

 from Trenton, or the head of tide -water, southward; 

 and this was the northern limit of the bird's usual mi- 

 gration. Now, throughout South Jersey, there is a san- 

 dy soil and a flora largely similar to that of the southern 

 seaboard states, while in Pennsylvania the soil is a heavy 

 clay-loam, and the flora so far different that many trees 

 which occur singly in New Jersey there are congregated 

 as forests, and in the smaller growths this also obtains. 

 Such variation in conditions the bird would be very sure 

 to recognize, and, in its gradual northward travel, in 

 May, come as far as it found those conditions obtaining 

 which characterize its favorite haunts in Virginia and 

 southward. We all know the peculiar flora of southern 



