24 Biology in America 



between the house and the mountain or height that formed 

 the second bank of the river. These continued passing for 

 more than a quarter of an hour, and at length varied their 

 bearing so as to pass over the mountain, behind which they 

 disappeared before the rear came up." 



And these lines from his verses to the bluebird are full of 

 the sweet freshness of the out-of-doors, and bring back to our 

 minds the days of our care-free, bare-foot, boyhood: 



' * Then loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring ; 



Then warm glows the sunshine, and fine is the weather; 

 The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring, 



And spicewood and sassafras budding together : ' ' 



' * The slow lingering schoolboys forget they '11 be chid, 



Wh'ile gazing intent as he warbles before them 

 In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red, 

 That each little loiterer seems to adore him. ' ' 2 



A charming picture of Wilson has been given us by James 

 Lane' Allen in his "Kentucky Warbler/' where we see him, 

 traveling twelve hundred miles on foot through the wilder- 

 ness to visit Niagara Falls and reaching * ' home 'mid the deep 

 snows of winter with no soles to his hoots." And again as 

 he sets forth on his solitary voyage down the Ohio: 



" . . . It is the twenty-fourth of February : the river, swol- 

 len with the spring flood, is full of white masses of moving 

 ice. . . . They warned him of his danger, urged him to take 

 a rower, urged him not to go at all. Those who risked the 

 passage of the river floated down on barges called Kentucky 

 arks, or in canoes hollowed each out of a single tree, usually 

 the tulip tree, which you know is very common in our Ken- 

 tucky woods. But to mention danger was to make him go to 

 meet it. He would have no rower, had no money to hire one, 

 had he wished one. He tells us what he had on board : in one 

 end of the boat some biscuit and cheese, a bottle of cordial 

 given him by a gentleman in Pittsburgh, his gun and trunk 

 and overcoat; at the other end himself and his oars and a 

 tin with which to bail out the skiff, if necessary, to keep it 

 from sinking and also to use as his drinking-cup to dip from 

 the river. 



"That February day the swollen, rushing river, the 

 masses of white ice the solitary young boatman borne away 



Quotations from the ''Passenger Pigeon" and the "Bluebird" in 

 the "American Ornithology." 



