13 



austral zone, the Carolinian faiinal area,^ These terms are now 

 generally employed in discussing the distribution of birds. 

 Each region, zone and area has animals and plants which are 

 peculiar to it, or which thrive best .within its limits. Certain 

 Carolinian, Alleghanian and Canadian birds breed in Massa- 

 chusetts, while there is a slight trace of the Hudsonian fauna 

 on Mount Greylock, the highest land in the State. If one 

 wished to find straggling Carolinian birds in Massachusetts in 

 the breeding season, he would naturally seek for them near sea 

 level in the southeastern parts along the coast, or in the valley 

 of the Connecticut River. Here he might find casually the 

 fish CTOW, the yellow-breasted chat or the Carolina wren. If he 

 were looking for Canadian birds he would go to the higher lands 

 of the northern and western part of the State, where he might 

 find the olive-sided flycatcher, yellow-bellied sapsucker, crossbill, 

 white-throated sparrow, slate-colored junco, pine siskin, blue- 

 headed vireo and several Canadian warblers. In southern Con- 

 necticut he might expect to find the sweet gum and the tulip 

 tree, the Louisiana water-thrush and the hooded warbler, but 

 on the hills of northern Berkshire County, Massachusetts, 

 where in both higher latitude and altitude, he would find spruce 

 woods, he might look with confidence for nests of the myrtle 

 warbler and the magnolia warbler. 



While the boundaries of the regions, zones and areas are, in 

 general, well marked, the altitude and vegetation of Massa- 

 chusetts lands are so varied that it might be possible to find 

 Carolinian, Alleghanian and Canadian birds breeding within 

 a short distance of one another. Occasionally, also, we may 

 find the usual conditions reversed. A moist forest lowers the 

 summer temperature. A swamp, with a dense growth of 

 coniferous trees, may be so cool in summer that Canadian 

 birds will breed there, while on near-by hills that have been 

 denuded of their native, coniferous forests and turned into farms, 

 with deciduous woodlots, Alleghanian birds will be found nest- 

 ing. A deep, cool, wooded, watered ravine in a farming country 

 may serve as a breeding place for Canadian forms which do not 

 nest in the surrounding uplands. Again, in the coastal region, 



1 See the Geographic DistribuJ;ion of Life in North America. Smithsonian Inst. Report, 1891, 

 pp. 365-415; see also United States Department Agriculture Biological Survey Bulletin No. 10, 

 1898, pp. 18-31. 



