MAY. 137 



I have mentioned the willows along shore. The species 

 is a matter of some uncertainty, perhaps, but probably 

 the Salix nigra. At all events I can testify that the re- 

 mark in Gray's botany, " With the branches very brittle 

 at the base," is quite true of those that grow here. It 

 needs but a single effort to climb into one, to be satisfied 

 on this point. These trees were planted at the very out- 

 set of the European occupation of the country, to resist 

 the eroding action of the water, and particularly of fresh- 

 ets ; and now, in land that has been lost to cultivation, 

 notwithstanding this care, are many of these old willows 

 broken, cavernous, the very acme of dilapidation, yet vigor- 

 ous withal. Such trees harbor enormous numbers of in- 

 sects, both winged and in a larval state, and are naturally 

 at this -time of the year the haunts par excellence of the 

 migrating warblers. Here are to be found those rare 

 forms known only to professional ornithologists, and not 

 always to them. Here, too, are earliest heard our vireos or 

 greenlets ; all songsters, but of different degrees of merit. 

 The most marked, perhaps, is the yellow-throat, that sings 

 with its whole body, as though the notes were shaken 

 from its feathers ; and as different as possible from the 

 robin-toned quaver of the restless redeye. 



Mile after mile we marked at distant points solitary 

 cabins close to the water's edge. Forsaken the greater 

 part of the year, they are tenanted now, and the shore 

 near by is the scene of busy industry. The fishermen are 

 reaping the single harvest that this long river yields, the 

 shoals of shad and herring. These fish are now bound 

 upward to their spawning-grounds, and strange it is that 

 ever one reaches the desired goal. As we passed by, our 

 sympathy was with the fisher rather than the fish, and 

 we hoped that every sweep of the seine might land a 

 mighty draught of fishes. But the toilers were not in 

 luck ; not nearly so much as I, who, taking a short walk 



