AUGUST BIRDS IN CAPE BRETON. 



AFTER traveling for two weeks through Cape 

 Breton, on rail, steamboat, wagon, and my own 

 legs, I felt sure that its distinctive tree was the 

 spruce, its prevailing flower the eye-bright (Eu- 

 phrasia officinalis)^ and its most ubiquitous 

 bird the junco. Certainly three more cheerful, 

 sturdy, and honest elements could not be woven 

 into every-day life, and they seem to me to be 

 emblematic of the island province and its people. 

 The junco was everywhere, in sunshine and in 

 rain, at gray dawn and after dewy eve ; in the 

 spruces which watched the sea at Ingoiiish, and 

 in the -early twilight of inland Loch o' Law. 

 He, she, and the infant juncos were at the road- 

 side, in the fields, in the pastures, on the moun- 

 tain top, and by the trout pool, and they were 

 always busy, happy, and treating their neighbors 

 as they liked to have their neighbors treat them, 

 like brothers. These neighbors included song 

 sparrows, white-throats, grass finches, yellow- 

 rumped and black-and-white creeping warblers, 

 blackcapped and Hudsonian titmice, some of the 

 thrush family, and occasionally pine siskins. 



