50 IN THE HEMLOCKS. 



when Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through 

 their lower halls. They did not go into society ID 

 the village ; they were quite well ; they had sons and 

 daughters ; they neither wove nor spun ; there was a 

 sound as of suppressed hilarity. 



I take it for granted that the forester was only 

 saying a pretty thing of the birds, though I have ob- 

 served that it does sometimes annoy them when 

 Spaulding's cart rumbles through their house. Gen- 

 erally, however, they are as unconscious of Spaulding 

 as Spaulding is of them. 



Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I 

 counted over forty varieties of these summer visit- 

 ants, many of them common to other woods in the 

 vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to these ancient 

 solitudes, and not a few that are rare in any locality. 

 It is quite unusual to find so large a number abiding 

 in one forest, and that not a large one, most of 

 them nesting and spending the summer there. Many 

 of those I observed commonly pass this season much 

 farther north. But the geographical distribution of 

 birds is rather a climatical one. The same tempera- 

 ture, though under different parallels, usually attracts 

 the same birds ; difference in altitude being equiva- 

 lent to the difference in latitude. A given height 

 above the sea level under the parallel of thirty de- 

 grees may have the same climate as places under 

 that of thirty-five degrees, and similar Flora and 

 Fauna. At the head-waters of the Delaware, where 

 T write, the latitude is that of Boston, but the region 



