68 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
one of this bird’s most common notes sounds like the syllables 
“roly-oly ” three or four times repeated in momentary intervals. 
The snow bunting appears to be more of a denizen of semi- 
barren moor land and of level plains and fields where weedy leas 
and waste margins of tillage at the boundaries of stubble are of not 
infrequent occurrence. The flocks of this species of bird have, we 
think, been more numerous this winter than usual, i. e. a greater 
number of small flocks, say of from fifty to eighty birds instead of 
the occasional large flocks of a thousand or more, and it is notice- 
ble that the flocks in their restless journeying movements, 
avoid extensive wooded areas; their food being found in the dried 
capsules of the tall weeds that tillers of the soil are unable utterly 
to exterminate, and whose cymes and panicles and umbels the win- 
tery snows hardly ever entirely submerge. The fact of the snow 
buntings being usually quite fat all through the season when they 
are met with here would seem to attest the abundance and rich 
quality of the customary food. ‘Their frequent and chirrupy calls 
to each other as the straggling groups move forward from clearing 
to clearing, and the hurried flight which the few chance loiterers 
evince, in order to join the main body of their congeners, demon- 
strates the strength of the socialistic tie, and that they love to con- 
tinue in sight and hearing of each other. The same communism is 
seen in their roosting or bivouacing habits, the flock huddling to- 
gether at nights under the eaves or in the recesses of a straw stack 
or on the ground in the thick shelter of low bushes of evergreens. 
The sparrows and grackles have also the same instinct of close as- 
sociation during the hours of darkness. 
The recent capture of a lynx in an extensive cedar swamp a 
few miles from here brought to notice the question of the origin of 
these ferocious and somewhat overgrown editions of felinze and the 
probability of their being merely expanded instances of the domes- 
tic cat. There are many instances on record where house cats have 
been driven forth from the settlers’ household, and of these outlaws 
having grown, during their wild predatory life, to a size much greater 
than that of the tame cat. 
One such instance is remembered in this neighborhood where 
a certain grey grimalkin attained gigantic proportions, and rambled 
about the woodland neighborhood a terror to the majority of ‘‘stay- 
