58 IN THE HEMLOCKS. 



night-warbler, which, by the way, I suspect was no new 

 bird at all, but one he was otherwise familiar with. The 

 little bird himself seems disposed to keep the matter a 

 secret, and improves every opportunity to repeat before 

 you his shrill, accelerating lay, as if this were quite 

 enough and all he laid claim to. Still, I trust I am 

 betraying no confidence in making the matter public 

 here. I think this is preeminently his love-song, as I 

 hear it oftenest about the mating season. I have 

 caught half-suppressed bursts of it from two males 

 chasing each other with fearful speed through the 

 forest. 



Turning to the left from the old road, I wander, 

 over soft logs and gray yielding debris, across the little 

 trout brook, until I emerge in the overgrown " Bark- 

 peeling," — pausing now and then on the way to 

 admire a small, solitary white flower which rises above 

 the moss, with radical, heart-shaped leaves, and a 

 blossom precisely like the liverwort except in color, 

 but which is not put down in my botany, — or to 

 observe the ferns, of which I count six varieties, some 

 gigantic ones nearly shoulder-high. 



At the foot of a rough, scraggy yellow birch, on a 

 bank of club-moss, so richly inlaid with partridge-berry 

 and curious shining leaves, — with here and there in 

 the bordering a spire of the false wintergreen (Pyrola 

 rotund if olio) strung with faint pink flowers and exhal- 

 ing the breath of a May orchard, — that it looks too 

 costlv a couch for such an idler, I recline to note what 



