l8 NATURE IN ACADIE. 



little ripples sparkling gaily in the morning sun, and all 

 around towered the hanging woods of hemlock and 

 pine. The moment I turned to continue on my way 

 again he dropped off the rail and disappeared in an 

 instant. 



In the woods I noticed a good many chickadees, a 

 most lively and scolding little black-and-white-headed 

 species, with all the habits of the English titmice ; it 

 appears to me to be intermediate between the coal and 

 marsh titmice of England. Sometimes associated with 

 these were a few golden-crowned kinglets (Regiilus 

 satrapa) which might readily be taken for the European 

 goldcrest (R. cvistatus), so similar is it in appearance and 

 habits. These little birds were creeping about in the 

 firs and uttering from time to time their feeble note, 

 just as their old world cousins do.* Another repre- 

 sentative of one of our familiar birds which I observed 

 here, was the brown creeper, which is almost identical 

 with the European species ; it was creeping up the 

 stem of a fir and uttering its shrill, slight note from 

 time to time. 



After passing over a zone of granite hillocks, of such 

 extraordinary irregularity that I had to leap and clamber 

 from boulder to boulder to make any progress, I came 

 upon a secluded little bog at the head of a small lake, 

 which was shut in on all sides by rocky and wooded 

 slopes, but connected at the farther end by a small 

 rocky channel with another swampy forest lake. This 

 bog had evidently formed a shallow part of the lake at 

 no very distant period, but it was now almost dry, 

 except at one part, where a small sluggish stream flowed 

 into the lake, springing mysteriously from the bowels of 

 the eternal granite, not a hundred yards away, in the 

 form of limpid crystal, but assuming an inky appearance 

 as it oozed slowly through the treacherous bog. This 

 stream necessitated very gingerly treading on my part 



* The most important difference between these two species appears 

 to me to be in the greater size of the American bird, which is longer 

 by half an inch than the European, while the bill is also somewhat stouter 

 than in the latter. Like the European species, the female R. satrapa 

 has the crest bright yellow, instead of reddish-orange as in the male. 



