26 THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
would do so later, or whether it was to remain with us all winter 
is not known, as I had no record for it since that date. It had been 
seen quite commonly in that neighborhood until the snow on the 
twenty-fourth. The fact that it could fly well had been definitely 
demonstrated again and again. 
I am glad that this mild sort of winter arrived at a time when 
‘I was about to help record some of the strangenesses of it. The 
weather bureau took temperatures and some of the street seers 
noted the late open condition of the river, but the fragments which 
I gathered were from the fields and woods and would else have re- 
mained unnoticed. Of course, I do not think that such notes have 
great value, but I believe that they are very interesting, and that 
in such comparisons, and such only, do we come to an appreciation 
of what early times were like. I am truly very grateful for that 
record which Mrs. Cairns has kept. It is a life record of changing 
seasons, of storms and quiet. Through its pages the kettle drums 
of the prairie blizzards howl, the coyote’s lonely cries are echoed 
in the lonely stillness of the night, the snow cracks as the crust 
breaks with the fleeing deer, and thus the winter goes on. The 
winter,—season of hunger and of want, season of cold and much 
misery, yet the season when men’s souls are tried and tempered into 
the finest steel. 
Birds Observed at Rum Village on October 7, 1920 
BY BROTHER ALPHONSUS, C. 5. C. 
The day was fine. We left Notre Dame at 8.45 a. m. and arrived 
at the large grove that is still called Rum Village, from an old 
Indian settlement, at 9:30 a. m. This piece of timber is perhaps 
the largest and finest in the immediate vicinity of South Bend, 
Indiana. ‘The city has recently purchased a portion of the grove, 
but the larger part is still in private hands and seemingly will soon 
he levelled to the ground. Already there are large clearings in it, 
and here and there wretched hovels have been set up. -If the entire 
wood was bought by the city, it would make one of the finest 
parks in the country. 
Just after we got into the grove, we discovered one pine warbler, 
two downy woodpeckers, and a white-brested nuthatch. This 
was the only pine warbler we found, although myrtle warblers were 
